On Saturday morning, I was at Pan Pacific Hotel to listen to Craig Russell, Saxo Bank’s Chief Market Strategist, share some of his market views. Craig has over 20 years of experience in the global currency, equity and futures markets and is based in China.
For some reason, I was a bit lethargic during the session and therefore didn’t really manage to pen down in an organised manner what Craig talked about.
Nevertheless, I did manage to record down some of the sectors in China that Craig was particular favourable about. These include:
- Materials sector – Cement and steel; shortfall in concrete.
- Banking stocks – Possible consolidation in the banking industry.
- Energy companies – Go for the infrastructure companies rather than the producers.
Craig also commented that China was heavily investing in Africa for resources.
An important pickup for commodity traders was on a report issued by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
This report is called the Commitments of Traders (COT) report and is refered to by professional commodity traders. Most amateurs don’t have a clue to its existance.
The COT report provide a breakdown of each Tuesday’s open interest for market reports in which 20 or more traders hold positions equal to or above the reporting levels established by the CFTC. These are broken down into long and short positions (both commercial and speculative).
An experienced trader can make use of the reports to help him in his trading positions. As to the best way of using the report, I’m not really sure. I suppose a search on google should provide some ideas.