The Great Debate

-The views expressed are the author’s own-

A warning by an International Energy Agency (IEA) analyst this week that quantitative easing (QE) risked inflating nominal commodity prices and derailing the recovery drew a withering response from Nobel Economics Laureate Paul Krugman, who labelled the unfortunate analyst the “worst economist in the world”.

According to New York Times columnist Krugman “Higher commodity prices will hurt the recovery only if they rise in real terms. And they’ll only rise in terms if QE succeeds in raising real demand. And this will happen only if, yes, QE2 is successful in helping economic recovery”.

Krugman’s criticism is unfair. There are clear links between QE and investor appetite for commodity derivatives and physical stocks (via the Federal Reserve’s “portfolio balance” effect), and from investors’ holdings of derivatives and physical inventories to cash prices (given the relatively inelastic supply and demand for raw materials in the short term).

In other words, there are financial as well as real economy links between QE and commodity prices. Commodities have some of the characteristics of financial assets as well as physical consumption materials. Via portfolio effects, QE could boost the relative (real) price of commodities even if it did not boost employment and output in the United States by very much.

It is a more open question whether commodity-driven inflation would hinder or promote a recovery in output and employment in the advanced industrial economies. It would reduce the real burden of inherited debts from the boom years. But it would harm savers, and it might harm manufacturers and households, depending on whether increased commodity prices were matched by rising non-commodity consumer prices and wages.

For the last decade, investors such as pension and hedge funds have been the fastest-growing segment of commodity derivatives markets. The most successful banks and dealers have been those which marketed themselves most effectively to this new group of customers.

In the next five years, however, expanding the use of derivatives as hedging instruments for producers and consumers will re-emerge as the priority area. Banks and dealers will be searching for natural counterparties for all the pension funds and hedge funds wanting to use futures and options as a source of returns, diversification and inflation protection.

Separating derivatives users into “hedgers” and “speculators” is notoriously hard. Problems with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)’s classification of commercial and non-commercial users are well-known. Even the more detailed categories contained in the new disaggregated commitments of traders reports are not completely satisfactory.

Total assets under management in commodity-tracking indices and exchange-traded products (ETPs) have stalled over the last nine months, as roll losses swallow up fresh money inflows.

There has been little change in total money committed to index-like investments or its distribution between long and short positions, according to the latest quarterly figures released by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) yesterday, which show positions as of 30 June 2010.

The data is based on a special call sent to all known index operators and firms offering futures and options-based exchange-traded products. It is the most comprehensive measure of total funds under management in the passive sector, but excludes physically backed ETPs such as the popular SPDR Gold Trust .

Commodity indices and exchange-traded products (ETPs) should be regarded as short- to medium-term investments rather than long-term strategies, as a quick glance at performance over the last 10 years shows.

Their value lies in providing simplicity and liquidity for retail investors and institutions such as pension funds, which do not want the complexity of managing futures positions with their daily margin adjustments and rollovers.

They also permit institutions and retail investors forbidden from investing in derivatives to gain exposure indirectly by repackaging derivatives as swap transactions or embedding them in structured notes, which resemble debt or equity securities.

John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own

Goldman Sachs cut the amount of risk it staked on commodity trading during Q2 2010 by almost 35 percent, part of a broad-based reduction in risk across the bank’s trading book. Value-at-risk (VaR) linked to commodity prices fell to an average of just $32 million per day between April and June, down from $49 million in the prior quarter and $40 million in the same period a year earlier, according to the firm’s earnings release. Cuts in VaR allocated to commodities were in line with reductions elsewhere, including interest rate risk (down just over 20 percent) and equities (down just over 30 percent). Only currency trading saw a slight increase in risk taking (up 3 percent). Commodity VaR was reduced to its lowest level since the three months ended September 2009, and before that November 2007.

Goldman has been reducing firm-wide VaR (net of diversification) since the middle of 2009 — shortly after the firm converted to Bank Holding Company (BHC) status regulated by the Federal Reserve, subsequently changed to Financial Holding Company (FHC) status, rather than its previous incarnation as a securities firm. Gross VaR (excluding diversification) started dropping after Q3 2009 (when it peaked at a massive $416 million). Gross VaR now stands at a more modest $272 million (down 35 percent). The firm’s massive interest rate risk (which peaked at $218 million in Q1 2009) has been cut to less than half that ($87 million in Q2 2010). But the April-June quarter was the first time the de-risking process had extending to commodities.To some extent, VaR is endogenous. Unless position limits are changed to offset it, VaR naturally rises and falls with market volatility. But firms can always over-ride fixed limits to keep VaR “budgets” unchanged despite changes in volatility if managers decide it is worthwhile.

What is notable is that market volatility rose during Q2 2010 in most asset classes (including commodities) after a quiet Q1. Yet Goldman’s VaR measures declined almost across the board, suggesting a deliberate policy to cut risk. Opportunities to generate revenue by taking market risk appear to be declining across the company’s trading operations. One crude measure of the firm’s “trading efficiency” is the amount of dollars it generates in net revenue for every $1 put at risk (VaR). Trading efficiency peaked at $46 for every $1 risked at the start of 2007 and has never recovered to the same level. Efficiency in Q2 2010 was just 24:1, down from 32:1 in the prior quarter, and less than half the peak (Charts 4 and 5).

Abandon hope all ye who enter here was the inscription written above the gates of Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Investors who decided to take a long position in commodity futures at the start of 2010 anticipating a global recovery, tightening supply-demand balances, and rising prices, could be forgiven a sense of despair.

Their risk-taking has been rewarded with range-bound prices and a contango eating deeply into returns. Most longs lost money in H1 2010.

BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward branded “the most hated man in America” may be surprised to find himself cast in the role of victim by a growing clan of web-based supporters on Facebook.

One such group ‘Support BP’ calls itself the defender of an “undeservedly harassed institution” and seeks to show that the public opprobrium BP faces over its now 60-day-old Gulf of Mexico oil spill is not universal.

Members have been increasingly vocal since a succession of strong rebukes of BP by U.S. President Obama and lawmakers at Thursday’s congressional hearing, which they are calling a “lynch mob”.

Policymakers’ new enthusiasm for cutting budget deficits will slow growth across the advanced industrial economies, cutting the outlook for commodity consumption and prices over the next 2-3 years.

For the past year, investors and commentators have been trying to guess how quickly extraordinary stimulus provided during the 2008-2009 crisis would be withdrawn.

Most attention focused on the timing of interest rate increases and measures to mop up excess liquidity provided by central banks. Instead tightening is set to commence from the fiscal side.

– John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own. –

Commodity prices exhibit a strong cyclical component — though it can be masked when producers are carrying a lot of excess capacity.

The attached chart shows the real price of various commodity baskets (Jan 1980=100) overlaid by U.S. interest rates (discount rate, later funds target), and the business cycle (NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee).

-- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own --

Like Archbishop Thomas Cranmer before he was burned at the stake for heresy, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) seems about to make a dramatic recantation.

Later today, the Commission will hold the first of three public hearings to discuss whether to impose tougher position limits in energy markets and restrict the availability of hedging exemptions. But it is already preparing to release a report that will accuse speculators of playing a significant role in last year's oil price spike, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

While it might seem a minor shift in emphasis, it is a radical reversal of the Commission's previously stated view that there was "no evidence" that investment flows had a material impact on prices. Commission staff have doggedly maintained that physical supply and demand factors could explain all the observed volatility in oil and other commodity prices over the past two years.