Copper slightly disappointed investors, ending the first half of the year with a decline of 3.50 percent. Worries about global inflation and, more specifically, the potential slowing of China’s economy weighed on copper’s price. The red metal rose 5 percent quickly in the new year, but similar to zinc, lead, palladium and platinum prices, declined sharply at the beginning of May.
[Read more...]Commodities 2011 Halftime Report
July 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Commodities don’t all perform in the same way. In any given year, a particular commodity will go gangbusters and outperform the group. However, that commodity will typically come back to Earth and underperform the following year or the year after that. This is why active management is important when investing in commodities. Active managers can benefit from rotating from winners to laggards or by investing in the companies which produce, farm or mine commodities most effectively.
[Read more...]Don’t Turn Out the Lights on Commodities Just Yet
May 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The prices for many commodities suffered the worst week in recent memory last week. Oil prices dipped below $100 per barrel, gold fell below $1,500 an ounce and silver gave back much of the past month’s gains by falling to the $35 an ounce level. The prices for other commodities such as sugar, tin, nickel, aluminum, lead and copper also pulled back.
[Read more...]What’s Driving Russia’s Outperformance?
March 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The Russian MICEX Index, which increased 22.5 percent in 2010, has jumped 15 percent so far in 2011, significantly outperforming many other markets.
The Case for Commodities in 2010
January 28, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The biggest emerging economies have ambitious plans that require a greater share of the world’s limited commodities. This trend is spurring profound and permanent disruptions in how these resources are allocated now and in the future. For investors, these disruptions present opportunities.
Simply put, an investment in natural resources is a vote of confidence in global economic growth.
[Read more...]A Decade of Hot Commodities
January 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment
We’ve updated our popular Periodic Table of Commodity Returns, and the headline news should come as no surprise – 2009 was a complete turnaround from the sector’s 2008 performance.
Commodities (as measured by the Reuters-Jefferies CRB Index) rose 24 percent in 2009, the largest single-year increase since the early 1970s.
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It May Take a Dragon to Breathe Fire Into Markets
At the Cambridge House’s Vancouver Resource Investment Conference this week, I am part of a special debate on whether China will boom or bust with bestselling author Gordon G. Chang. The title of Chang’s book, The Coming Collapse of China, states his position quite clearly and I look forward to the intellectual challenge of convincing him otherwise.
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