Commodity Corner

Beef off menus, on agenda in Argentina

If there’s one thing that gets Argentines hot under the collar, it’s rising beef prices, so it’s not surprising that surging costs at the butcher shop are ringing alarm bells at the presidential palace.     Local TV stations are reporting a collapse in sales and some angry steak lovers have even set up a Facebook group to promote a one-week beef-eating strike. Some cuts have gone up by as much as 50 percent since the start of the year, according to local media, forcing government officials to play down the hikes as a temporary blip and blame their old enemies — the farmers.     Economy Minister Amado Boudou has blamed recent rains for the price rise, saying ranchers are keeping their animals out grazing on the lush Pampas pastures instead of sending them to market.     President Cristina Fernandez, who enthusiastically promoted pork as an alternative to beef by comparing it to Viagra last month, also pointed a finger at the weather, but took a pop at ranchers too.     “It’s true, beef’s gone up. It’s gone up a lot, as has the price the farmers are getting,” she said this week, drawing an angry response from farm leaders, who said short-sighted government policy and middlemen were the real villains.     The government has curbed exports on-and-off for years to keep a lid on the cost of the nation’s favorite food and the current spike in prices has raised the specter of fresh disruption to shipments from the country, a leading exporter.     But as beef becomes increasingly unaffordable, some Argentine shoppers might be taking the president’s pork recommendation a lot more seriously.

Why are commodities risky assets for investors?

Recently I received an email asking me to explain why commodities are risky assets. ”I would think energy and raw materials would still be in demand, even if Dubai defaults,” the writer said.

 It’s a good point. People need to eat, drink, drive and live. They can’t do it without commodities.

 But for investors commodities are risky. That is because they mostly invest using commodity futures, which are subject to wild price swings because they react strongly and immediately to demand and supply news and changing expectations for the future.    Since commodities became more popular with investors they have also become highly influenced by market sentiment and macro economic indicators and that’s why they have been moving alongside equities.

More investors in commodity futures markets is also why the link between equities and commodities has become much stronger over the past year to 18 months.

 But that’s an aside. Ultimately commodities are risky because they are volatile. Institutional investors don’t like volatility whether its price volatility or return volatility.

from Global Investing:

Investors break commodities link with equities

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.

from MacroScope:

Will food prices rise?

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?

Live from London Metal Exchange Week 2009

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.

from Global Investing:

Start building the bunker

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.

Locked out of car, cut finger breaks monotony on crop tour

    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.

from From Reuters.com:

Mining gold in Russia’s remote Chukotka region

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.

from MacroScope:

Running out of resources

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."

Oil Market Contango Widening

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.