Are Commodities and Equities in a New Bull Market?

After job numbers this morning, central banks' comments, and Chinese currency intervention, equities and commodities moved sharply higher. However, does this activity signify the start of a new bullish cycle?

Commodities are, for the most part, bullish today. With positive sentiments across all sectors, it appears that basic materials including crude oil, gasoline, gold, and silver are trading much higher. Interestingly, natural gas is not trading as high as its counterparts. Along with this trend, it did not react feverishly to the central bank news like other commodities. It actually stayed flat and then spiked lower at about 8:18am on heavy volume.

Despite the interesting move downward, commodities appear to faring well in today's market condition. Where can traders find lucrative opportunities without directly exposing themselves to the leverage apparent in the futures markets? One option is investing in mining companies. For example, a small-cap gold miner is Jaguar Mining JAG. Jaguar operates multiple gold mineral properties in Brazil, and has several subsidiaries.

Great Panther Silver GPL is a silver miner that maintains operations in Mexico. Benzinga learned more about its operations, and while the stock has had a bearish trend in the last several months, it may be poised for a run up in the future.

Interestingly, many airline companies did not fall downwards in today's trading. A large spike in crude oil and gasoline typically scares off airliners, but there may be larger forces at play. The fact that AMR Corp AMR, the parent of American Airlines, gained over 40% in today's session may have been the force buoying other airliners' activity.

On a similar note, offshore oil drillers made significant gains today, highlighting an overall good day for the energy sector. Companies like Transocean RIG and British Petroleum BP saw gains of over 2% today, presumably due to the good macroeconomic news and the subsequent run up by commodities.

All of the primary sectors made gains today, but the next week of trading will truly confirm overall sentiment. There have been many times in the past where there are a few good days but many more down days in the market. Traders should keep an eye on the news and understand what is going on with the European debt situation while understanding what is going on in terms of US jobs and debt.

• Long hard metals while shorting energy as a hedge. Metals are safer than energy, and energy's volatility can help magnify protection if things become worse.

• Go long natural gas, the lack of activity today may simply be a delay in trading activity.

• Long equities but long the dollar as a hedge. If a long term bull rally is starting, now is a good time to get in on the action.

• Short all hard commodities. These will be the first to decline in the event of a massive bearish move.

• Miners and other energy-based equities will make good shorts. Small-cap equities tend to be much more volatile as well.

• Airliners benefit greatly from low crude oil and gas prices, but one would need to keep an eye on overall equity markets.