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Check back later today for Daniel’s Den and visit the BMR comments section throughout the day for updates and helpful information.

1. Gold has traded between $1,317 and $1,325 so far today…as of 7:00 am Pacific, bullion is up $6 an ounce at $1,322…the slide in Gold prices last week was accompanied by pronounced outflows from global exchange-traded funds, including 6.5 tonnes on Friday, according to Commerzbank…holdings in Gold ETFs tracked by Bloomberg decreased by more than 20 tonnes last week, reversing the lion’s share of the inflows seen since the start of the year…Silver has added 19 cents to $16.52…Copper and Nickel are both up slightly at $3.08 and $5.90, respectively…Cobalt is trading at a decade high of $36.97 while the U.S. Dollar Index has fallen one-fifth of a point to 90.14…Oil prices are trying to snap back, up 75 cents a barrel to $59.95, after WTI’s worst week in 2 years as concerns mounted over rising U.S. production…another 26 Oil rigs went to work in the U.S. last week, the biggest jump in a year…meanwhile, the U.S. Energy Information Administration raised its forecast for production this year to 10.6 million barrels a day…that’s up about 300,000 bpd from what it expected just a month ago and would best a 1970 record by about 1 million bpd…

2. OPEC said today that it expects demand for Oil to grow faster than it originally expected in 2018…that’s encouraging but the organization also sees supplies from beyond the producer group surging this year, driven by even stronger-than-expected U.S. output…a monthly report also showed OPEC’s production was little changed in January as the group continues to limit its output for a second year (Iraq appears to be an exception, though) in order to balance an oversupplied market…however, the 14-member cartel said it now sees non-OPEC production growing by 1.4 million barrels per day, up 250,000 bpd from its estimate in its last monthly report…it expects nations outside OPEC to pump a total of 59.26 million bpd in 2018, 320,000 bpd higher than its last forecast…the United States accounts for more than half of that upward revision…bottom line, ironically, is that the world is producing and consuming record amounts of Oil while various groups and governments in Canada engage in a domestic “War on Oil” to help “save the planet”…

3. Despite last week’s drop in Oil prices, which are certainly not at inflationary levels, the inflation “boogeyman” was a key factor in the biggest weekly slide in U.S. equity markets since January 2016…a key piece of economic data to be released on Wednesday – consumer prices – is expected to give a clearer indication on the pace of inflation and therefore the frequency of anticipated interest rate increases…FactSet analysts are looking for a 0.2% uptick in the Consumer Price Index, down slightly from last month’s 0.3% increase…

4. Valentine’s Day is Wednesday and, according to the National Retail Federation, U.S. consumers are expected to spend a near-record $19.6 billion on Valentine’s Day gifts, up from $18.6 billion last year…on average, consumers are planning to spend $143.56 on gifts as more than half the population (55%) celebrate what some have dubbed a “Hallmark Holiday”…the jewelry sector will receive the most significant chunk of Valentine’s Day gift-buying at $4.7 billion, building on a trend of increasing U.S. jewelry demand according to the World Gold Council (4th quarter demand was the strongest in 8 years)…consumers are expected to spend $3.7 billion on a romantic evening out, $2 billion on flowers, $1.8 billion on candy and $1.9 billion on clothing…

5. The Evolve Marijuana ETF (SEED, TSX) started trading on the TSX this morning as the marijuana sector continues to expand in the ETF market…SEED will invest in its own actively managed portfolio comprising companies listed domestically and globally with business activities in the recreational and/or medical marijuana industry…Evolve CEO Raj Lala said in a statement, “We believe the international cannabis industry is poised to exceed $30 billion by 2021, which would be a 60% compounded annual growth rate in the next few years. The next wave of growth could be driven by the globalization of the industry. Active management in SEED allows us to capitalize on these opportunities.”

6. Interesting fact – before this month, a drop of 10% from an all-time high in the Dow in less than 2 weeks hadn’t happened since 1928…a look at other, similar sudden market breaks throughout U.S. stock market history shows a relatively encouraging pattern of a fairly quick recovery…the Dow is building on Friday’s rebound with a gain of 253 points through the first 30 minutes of trading…roughly 79% of S&P 500 companies have reported Q4 revenue above analyst expectations so far this earnings season, compared with a long-run average of 60%, according to Thomson Reuters data…in Toronto, the TSX is enjoying a rare triple digit advance as it’s up 119 points as of 7:00 am Pacific…one only has to glance at the political landscape across Canada to understand why the TSX Composite is actually the worst-performing national index in the entire developed world over the past year, down 4% over the past 12 months…by contrast, the S&P 500 has jumped 14%…the main Canadian benchmark closed Friday below its 2008 peak just prior to the onset of the financial crisis…the Venture has added 7 points to 821 through the first 30 minutes of trading…the Ontario government has inked a deal to use Shopify Inc.’s e-commerce platform for cannabis sales online and in stores as part of its plan to be the province’s sole distributor of legal recreational marijuana…the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation (OCRC), a subsidiary of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, will use the Ottawa-based company’s online store software for its online and mobile sales portal…

7. Following the unofficial news that Tesla is now in talks with the Chile-based Lithium mining firm SQM about securing long-term Lithium supplies, a BMW executive has now been quoted by Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as saying that a 10-year supply contract for Lithium and Cobalt for BMW was now close to being signed…BMW recently said it believes its needs for car-battery raw materials will grow 10-fold by 2025 and that it had been surprised by “just how quickly demand will accelerate”…BMW plans to offer 25 electrified vehicles by 2025 and, like many of its peers, prefers the use of Nickel-Magnesium-Cobalt batteries…the boom in electric cars could more than quadruple demand for Cobalt to more than 450,000 tonnes by 2030 from less than 100,000 tonnes last year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance…

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