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Glencore boss on acquisition trail

London - After years of on-off talks, months of brinksmanship and often bitter negotiations, Glencore's head Ivan Glasenberg gets to complete the $30bn acquisition of Xstrata on Thursday, the mining industry's biggest takeover yet.

But even as the champagne pops, investors and rivals are asking where the highly ambitious South African will look for his next deal. Many are already pointing to vulnerable or undervalued rivals, including Anglo American [JSE:AGL].

Anglo has now set itself on a turnaround path with a new CEO, but is still battling to overcome the impact of overruns at its $8.8bn Minas-Rio iron ore project in Brazil and an unprecedented squeeze in platinum, where it faces weak prices, high costs and combative unions. Its shares trade at discount to the sum of the parts that some analysts put at 50%.

"I still see Anglo as vulnerable, and I see Glencore as a natural buyer for it," Gait said.

Go for it Ivan, I need to remove AGL from my portfolio and am hoping for something like this to boost the price a little.

The Federal Open Market Committee releases its statement at 2 p.m. in Washington following a two-day meeting. None of the 47 economists in a Bloomberg News survey conducted from April 25 to April 29 forecast that the central bank will change the pace of its bond-purchase program this month.

Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will probably reduce the Federal Reserve’s monthly bond buying in the fourth quarter to $50 billion from $85 billion, economists said in a Bloomberg survey. The central bank will probably leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged at 0.25 percent following the meeting.

The ECB announces its monthly interest-rate decision tomorrow.

February Case-Shiller 20-city Home Price Index: +9.3% actual, +8.7% Briefing.com consensus, +8.1% prior

Q1 Employment Cost Index: +0.3% actual, +0.5% Briefing.com consensus, +0.5% prior

April Chicago PMI: 49.0 actual, 52.0 Briefing.com consensus (Not too good hey ?)

April Consumer Confidence: 68.1 actual, 61.0 Briefing.com consensus, 59.7 prior

Credit Suisse says stay bearish on commodities. Gold stocks most oversold since 2008.

Credit Suisse says: "We agree with the bearish stance on commodities held by Ric Deverell, the head of the Credit Suisse Commodities Research team. We are cautious, given that:

"Elevated prices have triggered a significant capex response, leading to excess supply in many instances;

"Chinese risks are high: the investment-share of GDP, at 48%, must fall, total debt is now 230% of GDP and quantitative tightening has started;

"Global macro momentum is slowing (we think until mid-year);

"We believe the dollar trade-weighted index has the potential to continue strengthening (typically bad for commodities);

"Commodity prices are still high relative to their long-run averages (in real terms) and producers' break-even (especially for iron ore and oil); and

Equities are a better inflation hedge than commodities, in our view.

"We remain underweight the resource sectors, which suffer from poor capital discipline, sub-market FCF yields, still optimistic positioning and in nearly all instances spot prices are below consensus (implying downgrade risks).

"Mining is the most sensitive sector to ISM and China infrastructure spending; yet, P/E relatives are only middling. When the sector has been this oversold, it has typically still underperformed over the next three months.

"Big-cap oil tends to outperform only when equities are falling, credit spreads are rising or the oil price is spiking, none of which is likely. The sector is not cheap on relative P/Es after adjusting for under-depreciation. However, we reverse our preference among the resource sectors - and now prefer energy to mining (the oil price looks more resilient than industrial commodities prices and valuations more attractive).

"Quoted gold stocks look very cheap (with P/B and forward P/E relatives both at 12-year lows) and are the most oversold since 2008.

Impact of lower commodities prices: each 10% off oil adds 0.2% to developed world GDP growth, takes 0.4% off inflation and thus allows central banks (esp. the ECB) to be more aggressive. It also adds 1.4% to European EPS (1.2% in the US). GEMs in aggregate are hurt by lower commodity prices, but commodity importers like India, Turkey and Korea benefit. Akzo Nobel, PPG, BMW and Safran are Outperform-rated commodity users with pricing power."

First quarter GDP deflator: +1.2% actual, +1.6% Briefing.com consensus, +1.0% prior

April final Michigan Consumer Sentiment Survey: 76.4 actual, 72.4 Briefing.com consensus, 72.3 prior

maybe it is for disable people in wheel chairs....wonder actually why there is not more? 

You are right, I am ashamed I never thought of that. 

Here's How To Tell When To Move Back Into Gold

In a nutshell the author states:

Applying an annual growth in demand of 2.6% on top of the inflation rates to gold's price since 1989 yields an intrinsic value of $1,269, or 9% lower than its current close.

Once again Patrick has surpassed himself. Well done.