The principles are simple. Document the supply and demand of a resource, the psychology of its market and participant behavior and you should have a handle on how prices move. Identify any leading indicators and your price prediction model is complete.
Interestingly enough while commodities markets are older than time, at the user level price movement in this group is not as well understood as stocks and bonds. While each commodity is unique and to some extent interlinked with broader trends in oil, gold and currencies, analyst coverage is not as common or as deep as we would want. Till about two years ago this was acceptable since markets would spike and prices would shoot on account of supply and demand pressures or when an aggressive player was trapped in a short squeeze in a given market at a time. Oil, or Iron, or Copper or Silver or Wheat would move, sometimes in a smaller group, sometimes by themselves; but never all at the same time. This changed with the arrival of 2008, with 147 dollar oil, 1200 dollar gold, correlations and volatilities that could downshift before you could even spell the word sell.
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