Fed considers upping QE3 size and language at Marketwatch.  Sounds like when operation sterilized twist expires at the end this year it will be replaced with an unsterilized increase in QE3 to infinity.

ISA suggests the precious metal complex to be the chief beneficiary of money printing and fiat currency, as opposed to many commentators considering hard assets as protection from the dollar (Daily Wealth).  A technician looks at an income hard asset play:  Chess.

ISA’s interest in commodity’s is driven my the booming emerging market middle class (FT).  Don’t look now, but a Big Move Coming In The Industrials from All Star Charts.

Though ISA comes to a different conclusion, the expensive thesis seems accurate in Farmland Costs Exceed Actual Value at Value Plays.  Yet deep value player and macro thinker Jim Roger continues to pound the table on Ag:  ““Few parts of the world economy will boom over the next few years, but agriculture will be one of them” at ETF Daily.  Last week Potash Corp (POT) reduced 2012 expectations.  POT’s latest slideshow.  Uncertainties about South American harvests are keeping global grain prices elevated at Sober Look.

Earnings season for commodity companies has only begun (and it snuck up on me).  Yesterday bellwether copper producer Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) reported third quarter results.

I have not yet examined results, but yesterday BTU soared as Peabody Energy Soars; Cost Cuts, China Lift Earnings (IBD).

“Through the first eight months of 2012, Chinese imports of the chief raw material in steel production totaled 34.1 million metric tons, up 29 percent from the same period in 2011.”  Yet, “After jumping to a record $330 per metric ton in early 2011, the world price of coking coal recently fell by nearly half to $170 a metric ton.”  China Daily

“U.S. 2012 coal exports, supported by rising steam coal exports, are expected to break their previous record level of almost 113 million tons, set in 1981. Exports for the first half of 2012 reached almost 67 million tons, surpassing most annual export volumes dating back to 1949. U.S. coal exports averaged 56 million tons per year in the decade preceding 2011. If exports continue at their current pace, the United States will export 133 million tons this year, although EIA forecasts exports of 125 million tons.”  EIA

The economy according to Union Pacific at Fortune.  CSX’s economic and commodity take at Pragmatic Capitalism.