Oil traders are looking ahead to two upcoming events. On Friday, November heating oil and gasoline futures go off the boards. And Tuesday, of course, is Election Day. The outcome for Friday is a certainty; Tuesday, not so much.

Commercial crude oil inventories fell by 1.5 million barrels last week, just 100,000 barrels shy of the consensus estimate. Oil stocks fell by 6.3 million barrels, to 291.7 million, the previous week.

IAMGold's (IAG) net earnings shot up 169% to $33.3 million, or $0.11 per share, versus the second quarter of 2007 on a 35% increase in revenue. EPS beat Street estimates by a penny a share, or 10%.

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Now the shoe seems to be on the other foot. Or, better put, the glove is on the other fist. Commodities' popularity with retail investors ebbs and flows with the inflation cycle. As inflationary pressures build, stocks and bonds cheapen; futures prices, in contrast, rise. And futures prices have been on a long tear, sending commodity brokerage commissions skyward.

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Well, yes and no. March wheat futures at the Chicago Board of Trade have been in a decided downtrend since topping out on October 1 at $9.64 per bushel. But the trend has stalled in the last few trading sessions. The contract settled at $7.96 on November 20, following a classic example of a "head-and-shoulders" top.

A new skirmish has broken out against contango. No, it's not a new dance program to fill in the void left by the writers' strike. Contango is the normal price relationship that exists between the futures delivery months of a storable commodity. Simply put, contango reflects the costs of carrying the commodity (storage, insurance, financing) for future delivery. The gold futures market, for example, is a contango market: nearby deliveries are priced lower than deferred deliveries (See Table 1).

A new skirmish has broken out against contango. No, it's not a new dance program to fill in the void left by the writers' strike. Contango is the normal price relationship that exists between the futures delivery months of a storable commodity. Simply put, contango reflects the costs of carrying the commodity (storage, insurance, financing) for future delivery. The gold futures market, for example, is a contango market: nearby deliveries are priced lower than deferred deliveries (See Table 1).

The latter question can be answered from an accounting or an investment perspective. This ain't no bookkeeping self-help site, so you can guess what perspective I'm going to take here.

Yes, taxes. We're getting letters, emails and phone calls galore asking about the tax treatment of commodity-based exchange-traded funds [ETFs] and exchange-traded notes [ETNs]. Precious few greeting cards, but lots of tax queries. Go figure.

There's no doubt steel would have helped most investors' portfolios over the past year. More accurately, shares of a steel producer like U.K.-based Rio Tinto plc (RTP).

Agribusiness, in fact, has been outshining gold over the past year, cranking out twice the yellow metal’s appreciation. A year ago, gold’s price was fixed by London dealers at $623 an ounce. On Monday, an ounce of bullion fetched more than $803. Holding gold, before costs, would have afforded an investor a nearly 2 % gain for the year.

Clearly, it was better to be an owner of silver than a gold bug. A long position in silver gained $930 per contract, while a gold contract brought in only $230.

Accountant Leo Bloom, tempted by the high life of Broadway, sang these wistful lyrics in the hit comedy "The Producers."

With spot prices reaching $93.80 a barrel Monday, oil certainly made a record record high—nominally. To truly reach Hall of Fame status, however, oil prices this year will have to average more than $94.80, 1980's inflation-adjusted zenith.

Ahh, but you need to take stock of commodities in another way ...

Why should anyone add gold—or, for that matter, any asset—to a portfolio? The answer that comes immediately to many people's minds is "return." It's the promise of outsized, and often outlandish, returns that entices people to call that 800 number in the wee hours of the morning to get their hands on the yellow metal.

No matter how you view the glass, there's no doubt yesterday's National Association of Realtors [NAR] report impacted the demand outlook for copper and building materials.