International coal prices hit $124 per ton this week, the highest levels in five months, as strong demand from reconstruction projects in Japan and reduced supply from flood-ravaged Australia has made coal supply tight. The floods in Queensland, Australia cut the country’s output of coal by 15 percent and other big coal producers such as Indonesia, South Africa and Colombia are experiencing similar production cuts due to floods of their own.
[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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2011 Halftime Report: The Cues for Copper
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.
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