Crude breaks major resistance as Gold takes profit off record highs ahead of key manufacturing data

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The James’ Report: Professional Resources for Professional Traders

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Crude Oil Futures break major resistance and moves higher on confidence demand will increase in the US.

Potential Hurricane may be adding to the jump in crude oil prices

Gold Futures drop off new all-time highs as gold tops 1910 for the first time ever with traders seeing currencies tumbling and they take shelter from falling prices.

Euro continues to strengthen this morning, trading at the highs of its range.

More News…

– European shares extended their gains for the second straight session taking the cue from Asian equities which rallied after a strong Chinese manufacturing PMI. Investors are still betting on indications for new supportive measures for the economy at the Jackson Hole summit this weekend.

– A better China’s flash PMI set the early tone for Europe while German ZEW Survey provided a headwind for risk appetite

– Price action overall appeared to be are-allocation from safe-havens into risk assets

– RBA Battellino: Current AUD currency is in line with fundamentals

– S&P president Deven Sharma stepping down and being replaced by a Citi COO

– UBS announces layoffs of 3500 staff. Nearly half of cuts to come from Investment Banking.

– Zew Economists: Fears of US recession and impact from sovereign downgrade increased uncertainty. The survey showed more skeptical results due to Euro Zone developments and disappointing German Q2 GDP data. The ZEW did note that the situation in Germany remained positive but did deteriorate considerably in Aug. The outlook was “extremely low” across all sectors of Germany industry but did not signal any pending recession

– The financial press reported that Greece’s austerity measures are negatively impacting local small businesses. Tight credit conditions, rising costs and declining demand have led some owners of small companies to consider closing down. According to the Athens Chamber of Commerce, approximately 80,000 companies in Greece have gone out of business since early 2010. It expects that more than 150,000 companies could go bankruptcy by the end of the year.

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Today’s Economic News:

Looking at the news this morning we can see early news gets us started at 830am with Retail Sales in Canada (crude Oil). This may not get things going here in the US much, but may get crude oil moving this morning early.

We then go through the 930am US Market OPEN in the US, and then we finish off our morning news with 1000am New Home Sales and Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index. Remember that the Manufacturing indexes are great to use with crude oil inventories tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1030am. We will talk more about using today’s 10am news for trading crude oil.

Remember today is a summer trading day so we will look carefully at low volume early, and then remember that we need to watch the clock after 11am est today for volume dropping ahead of lunch. We do not expect to see a golden lunch during the summer months.