forecasting commodity markets: using technical, fundamental, and econometric analysis

1995 book by julian roche is a bit disappointing and maybe just dated; it mentions that less work has been done with commodity price prediction than in other markets, and the fact that i have had such a hard time finding refs on it bears that out. refers briefly, though apparently seriously, to the idea of using numerical patterns from astrological sources and the fibonacci series... yikes! it also briefly mentions the possibility of using futures for prediction, but then cops out with some easily overcome excuses about how hard it might be. the types of technical analysis that it cites are really dirt dumb simple, though it does justify that by stating that those predictions are only good in the short term anyway, and you're not going to have enough data to fit a complex model reliably.

one very worthwhile part of the book is the table of forecasting approaches on pages 175-179 (heavily adapted from strategic business forecasting, pp 159-164) and their characteristics, including short-, medium-, and long-term accuracies. looks like trend analysis, seasonal adjustments, and box-jenkins type arima models are easy ways to the top of the game.