Noon – Thursday October 16
It’s another down day for most ag commodities, and another crazy and wild and wobbly day for the stock markets.
The Chicago markets are generally down a bit for most crops and livestock, but have also been bouncing around. Canola in Winnipeg has had a nice gain so far today. Let’s see if it holds on to it.
The stock markets are giving us another hair-raising day and analysts are giving us many more reasons to believe we’re going into a recession. BMO has just predicted Canada’s going into a recession, which won’t shock and stun anyone, but it seems to add to the air of gloom out there.
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Worrisome drop in grain prices
Prices had been softening for most of the previous month, but heading into the Labour Day long weekend, the price drops were startling.
The Dow’s been wild again today, going down, racing back up, going down again. Volatility continues to be king. The TSX continues to give Canadians with retirement savings a lot of reasons to fear the future.
So where are we at? Are we near a bottom and are some of the prime minister’s “opportunities” available for the picking? Or are we still in the upper part of a big collapse that’s going to suck us all down?Â
Last week I interviewed Robert Prechter of Elliott Wave International, who has been proclaiming the latter view for years now. Pretty scary stuff. (It’s in this week’s issue of the paper.) He believes that all asset classes – stocks, commodities, artwork, etc. – are “all one market” now, and they’ll crash together. His views are financially apocalyptic, and the scary thing is that he’s been right on much about the scale, nature and progress of the collapse across markets so far, so it’s hard to dismiss his views.
His views about commodities don’t fit well with those of Jim Rogers, the famed commodity investor, and that’s why I’ve recently asked him some questions and am looking at his views for next week’s paper. But he too doesn’t offer any reassurances that the commodity price plunge will end right away.
