Investors smelling profits in commodities are using the sector as an early cycle play, alongside equities, because a lack of production capacity means higher prices sooner rather than later. 

Historically, prices of natural resources lag equities, which typically front run the economic cycle by between 18 to 24 months. The change is also partly due to the tumbling dollar, a major driver in recent weeks.

The natural resources sector is also one of the last to price in economic expansion. But not this time.

Global capacity utilisation rates in petroleum products and mining between 2002 and 2007 averaged more than 90 percent. Analysts estimate those levels fell to 80 percent -- still very high -- in July 2009.

In contrast, utilisation rates among manufacturing companies was estimated at around 65 percent last July from about 80 percent between 2002 and 2007. Equivalent numbers for the auto sector were 45 percent and 80 percent respectively.

The large output gap in manufacturing and the auto sector means production can ramp up easily without any bottlenecks when the global economy sees stronger growth, albeit from low levels.

Not so in commodities, where firms are running a tight ship.

The Becker-Posner Blog has an interesting debate posted on the question of  food shortages and their accompanying price rises. As usual, it is a to-and-fro between economist and Nobel laureate Gary Becker and his University of Chicago colleague Richard Posner, a U.S. appellate judge.

Becker reckons that some commodity prices will rise as the global economy recovers but that food is different.

"Rapid growth in future world GDP is likely to greatly raise the prices of oil and other fossil fuels, unless concerns about global warming induce major steps to reduce the demand for these fuels. Rapid growth in world output is also likely to sharply raise the demand for cereals, meat, and other foods in developing countries. However, I have tried to show why food is different from fossil fuels and minerals, like copper, in that the supply of food is not limited by natural bounds on overall quantity. Rather, the efforts and ingenuity of farmers and researchers are able to greatly increase world food supply to meet even very large increases in the world demand for food."

Posner is not so sure, questionning the impact of technology on food production::

"Technological innovations may hold down increases in the price of food that are due to the increased demand for a rich diet as multiplied by increase in population. But those innovations may create substantial externalities even if they do not push up prices (indeed, the less the increase in prices, the greater the output of agricultural commodities and hence the greater the externalities). As more and more countries adopt the most efficient methods of agricultural production, and thus for example converge on the optimally genetically modified variants of crops, genetic diversity will decline, which will increase the potential damage from blights.... Agriculture is a heavy user of water, moreover, and global warming appears to be reducing the supply of water usable for irrigation by reducing the size of glaciers. The run off from the seasonal melting of glaciers provides a more usable supply of water than rainfall, because the water from a melting glacier is channeled, while rain that falls outside a river or other body of water is difficult to store for use in irrigation.

I am one of those timid souls who worry about the downside of technological advance and economic growth. I find the prospect of continued increases in population and income, and of the technological innovations necessary to cope with those trends, unsettling."

You can read the full arguments on their blog here. But which side are you on?

The great and good of the global metals industry gather for London Metal Exchange week — the flagship event for the industry.

With most base metal prices running way ahead of fundamentals, real and apparent demand unclear and leading economies at different stages of recovery or not, its a key time to take the temperature of banks, producers, consumers and funds involved in metals.

To follow us on Twitter look for hashtag LME.

They keep telling us that the recession is over so maybe now's the time to start worrying about inflation. That's the view many wealthy investors are already taking, reasoning that a little bit of the yellow shiny stuff will provide some comfort as we start piling our cash into wheelbarrows to do the weekly groceries shop.

It is gold exchange traded commodities (ETCs) that have seen the biggest investor inflows this year so perhaps it's not surprising that the gold price broke through $1,000 an ounce this week.

"Investors are concerned about sovereign risk, quantitative easing, government deficits and the outlook for the US dollar," said Nicholas Brooks, head of research and investment strategy at ETF Securities, at a Dow Jones Indexes commodities briefing on Tuesday. "They are using gold as an insurance policy."

Physically-backed gold ETC holdings are now 8 million ounces, up 33 percent versus end-2008 levels, he said. Gold inflows have been relatively steady, even when the price has corrected, with the biggest flows coming not when Lehman went bust, but when the scale of US quantitative easing and the fiscal cost of the financial bailout became apparent. This supports the view that gold is being used as a hedge against sovereign and inflation risk, Brooks said.

Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson has been building up a large exposure to gold this year, seemingly as part of an inflation hedge.

John Reade, head of markets strategy at UBS Investment Bank, also confirmed that UBS clients were showing an interest in assets that would provide inflation protection. "You don't need high inflation for gold to perform well - you only need an increase in the number of people who expect inflation to rise."

Over the last 30 years the returns from gold have been reasonable but not great, with high volatility, he said. But in an environment where the US dollar is weakening, the Fed Funds rate is rising and inflation is rising, gold can be expected to perform, with returns of over 40 percent per annum if CPI increases. This suggests that an investor's tactical allocation to gold should rise in the coming months, Reade said.

He forecast an average gold price of $1,050 an ounce for 2010, pointing out that gold remains very lightly owned by most institutional investors. This was not consistent with inflationary or US dollar weakness scenarios, he said.

    It was a case of keys being accidentally locked in the car, a cut to the finger by a corn leaf and a chat about hail damage at a scouting stop on the Pro Farmer crop tour on Tuesday in Carlton, Nebraska.
    And thus, the monotony of scouting a seemingly-endless number of corn and soybean fields in the Midwest grain belt was broken, momentarily, by these incidents.
    At the stop in Carlton, a U.S. Agriculture Department official, in the car behind ours, accidentlly locked his keys in his rented Hyundai.
    Then, this reporter deeply sliced his finger on the leaf of a corn stalk.
    While the government man borrowed a phone from another scout to call the rental company and I dressed my wound with a wet napkin and a bandage, the farmer whose bean field we were scouting pulled up in his pickup.
    Then, Rich Mosier, a broker with brokerage and research company Allendale, Inc., passing through from his home in Davenport, Iowa, stopped for a chat.
    All of the sudden, it was a veritable meeting of the minds on the side of Highway 4.
    With a locksmith on his way, talk returned to farming.
    Scout Elwood Line, our driver and a farmer from northeast Illinois, asked if Carlton farmer John Lange was a ‘John Deere’ man, referring to the farm machinery maker Deere & Co.
    “Both — John Deere and International,” Lange said. “International combine and a John Deere head.”
    Mosier said the crops in this area, especially the dryland fields, were first hammered by hail and are now thirsty for rain.
    “The dryland has suffered the last three weeks. We haven’t had any big rains,” Mosier said.
    After about 45 minutes, the locksmith showed up to jimmy the door of the Sonata.
    Asked how he was doing, the locksmith replied, “Better than you, I guess.”
    Corn yield in the field we scouted  was projected at 193 bushels per acre, while the soybean count was 1,034 pods in a 3-by-3 foot area.

Chukotka, a region revived in the last eight years by the $2.5 billion investment of Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich, produced a fifth of Russia's gold in the first half of this year. Gold is the region's passport to growth after Abramovich quit as governor last July.

Only South Africa holds more gold than Russia, but Moscow's fragmented industry has struggled to access vast reserves in its inhospitable Far East. The region was first mined in the 1930s by prisoners of the Gulags set up by Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Senior Commodities Correspondent Robin Paxton and Moscow-based video journalist Heleen van Geest return from the Chukchi Peninsula with a series on the revival of gold mining in the Gulag region.

Oil prices are more than double the December-February troughs and commodity prices generally are going up as the market cheers signs of an economic recovery.

Jeremy Grantham, chairman of U.S.-based money monager GMO, warns that the world is running out of resources in the long run yet is not correctly pricing the fact.

"We are simply running out of everything at a dangerous rate... As we move through our remarkable and irreplaceable hydrocarbon reserves, the price will, of course, rise remorselessly to ration supplies. We need, it seems, the shock of a Pearl Harbor to really gear up and make sacrifices," he says.

Grantham points out that in 1977 President Jimmy Carter warned that we were running out of oil and urged people to fully insulate 80% of the houses in 10 years.

"Thirty precious years have passed, and there is now no safety margin. We must prepare ourselves for waves of higher resource prices and periods of shortages unlike anything we have faced outside of wartime conditions," he writes.

"In fact, I believe we are already several years into this painful transition but are still mostly invested in denying it."

The spread between front-month oil futures and contracts for later delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange (see Fig. 1) has widened dramatically this month. (See Fig. 2)

The widening contango frequently portends a rise in inventories. For example, in Fig. 3, it can be seen that when the discount for fronth-month crude to second-month crude widened to near $4 a barrel earlier this year, inventories jumped to 19-year highs. The relationship between inventories and the outright futures price can be seen in Fig. 4. 

Interesting take on the rise in commodity prices from Julian Jessop, chief international economist at Capital Economics. The rise has little to do with the weaker dollar and everything to do with expectations of global economic recovery, he says.

The broad-based revival in commodity prices since March clearly reflects a combination of factors. One of these is the pure accounting effect of the depreciation of the dollar. Other things being equal, a fall in the U.S. currency will of course put upward pressure on commodity prices when measured in dollar terms - commodity producers with bills to pay in other currencies such as euros and pounds will require a higher price in dollars, while consumers outside the dollar bloc will be more able to pay that higher price. However, the movements in currencies have generally been small compared to the underlying movements in commodity prices.

Looking closely at the relative performance of different commodities, Jessop reckons the rally has primarily been led by oil and industrial metals, which are the most sensitive to the economic cycle. Inflation-driven commodities such as precious metals, including gold, have underperformed in the rally, he says.

Jessop takes all this to mean that higher commodity prices are just another manifestation of the growth in confidence about the global economic outlook. However, echoing investors who increasingly want to see concrete evidence, he warns that the anticipated pick-up in growth-based demand has yet to actually materialise.

Is it all just an illusion, then? Wishful thinking that allows for a rebuilding of depleted stocks?

Another food price spike could be on the horizon, analysts told Reuters. 
 
Consider these factors:
* Grain prices, led by soybeans, have been up since March. 
* South America’s crop is expected to be a disappointment. Crops in both Brazil and Argentina have a poor outlook. In fact, the U.S. Agriculture Department steadily lowered its forecast for Argentina’s soybean crop throughout the year.

* Many will be looking to the United States to come through with a big crop. But U.S. soybean stocks began the 2009/10 marketing year at a five year low. That means there’s not a lot of surplus to keep prices level if there’s any type of disruption in supply or weather calamity.

Signs of an economic recovery, which are just now beginning to be realized, would be threatened if the world were to face soaring food prices reminiscent of last year. 
 
“It would not be what the financial media is describing today as a green shoot,” said Rich Feltes, senior vice president at MF Global Research. “It’s going to be a green shoot that’s being killed with Roundup Ready herbicide. It’s not going to be good.”

For more information on food price worries, click here.