Home » Posts tagged 'commodity prices'

Tag Archives: commodity prices

China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), announced Monday to “immediately” increase pork stockpiles around the country after prices fell last week, according to Bloomberg.

NDRC said the country’s staple meat stockpiles are being replenished as an index monitoring pork prices slipped below a critical threshold. The national average of pork prices against grain prices index registered 4.98 to 1 between Feb. 21 and 25, falling below the 5 to 1 ratio. The ratio signals the need for China to increase pork supplies.

Hog prices are back to levels not seen since before the African swine fever ravaged pig herds across the country, right before the virus pandemic.

NDRC will increase pork purchases to provide the hog market with stability. As much as 40,000 tons of frozen pork will be added to state reserves.

“The goal of stockpiling is to stop the market prices from excessive fall, to improve supply-demand balance, and boost prices (of pork) and the confidence of farmers,” Wang Zuli, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, told Reuters.

The economic planner will work with authorities to immediately stockpile for state and local reserves. Stockpiling has already begun in the provincial level, including Beijing, Jiangxi, Hubei, and Chongqing.

As early as September 2020, we noted China began panic hoarding commodities. Bloomberg, at the time, called them “mammoth” purchases of crude, strategic materials, and farm goods, and Michael Every of Rabobank said, “This is being done to ensure China can ride out any repeat of this year’s supply disruptions, or deterioration in trade relations with the US, for example.”

More than a year and a half later, China has a greater internal circulation of commodities than the rest of the world.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Will You Do When Inflation Forces U.S. Households To Spend 40 Percent Of Their Incomes On Food?

May 10, 2021

What Will You Do When Inflation Forces U.S. Households To Spend 40 Percent Of Their Incomes On Food?

Did you know that the price of corn has risen 142 percent in the last 12 months? Of course corn is used in hundreds of different products we buy at the grocery store, and so everyone is going to feel the pain of this price increase. But it isn’t just the price of corn that is going crazy. We are seeing food prices shoot up dramatically all across the industry, and experts are warning that this is just the very beginning. So if you think that food prices are bad now, just wait, because they are going to get a whole lot worse.

Typically, Americans spend approximately 10 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food. The following comes directly from the USDA website…

In 2019, Americans spent an average of 9.5 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food—divided between food at home (4.9 percent) and food away from home (4.6 percent). Between 1960 and 1998, the average share of disposable personal income spent on total food by Americans, on average, fell from 17.0 to 10.1 percent, driven by a declining share of income spent on food at home.

Needless to say, the poorest Americans spend more of their incomes on food than the richest Americans.

According to the USDA, the poorest households spent an average of 36 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food in 2019…

As their incomes rise, households spend more money on food, but it represents a smaller overall budget share. In 2019, households in the lowest income quintile spent an average of $4,400 on food (representing 36.0 percent of income), while households in the highest income quintile spent an average of $13,987 on food (representing 8.0 percent of income).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“The Outlook For The Global Economy Has Deteriorated”: Oil, Copper And Lumber Are All Telling Us The Next Economic Downturn Is Here

November 19, 2018

“The Outlook For The Global Economy Has Deteriorated”: Oil, Copper And Lumber Are All Telling Us The Next Economic Downturn Is Here

Oil, copper and lumber are all telling us the exact same thing, and it isn’t good news for the global economy. When economic activity is booming, demand for commodities such as oil, copper and lumber goes up and that generally causes prices to rise. But when economic activity is slowing down, demand for such commodities falls and that generally causes prices to decline. In recent weeks, we have witnessed a decline in commodity prices unlike anything that we have witnessed in years, and many are concerned that this is a very clear indication that hard times are ahead for the global economy.

Let’s talk about oil first. The price of oil peaked in early October, but since that time it has fallen more than 25 percent, and the IEA is warning of “relatively weak” demand out of Asia and Europe…

The International Energy Agency said on Wednesday that while US demand for oil has been “very robust,” demand in Europe and developed Asian countries “continues to be relatively weak.” The IEA also warned of a “slowdown” in demand in developing nations such as India, Brazil and Argentina caused by high oil prices, weak currencies and deteriorating economic activity.

“The outlook for the global economy has deteriorated,” the IEA wrote.

Meanwhile, the price of copper has been declining for quite some time now. The price of copper also fell substantially just before the last recession, and many analysts are pointing out that “Dr. Copper” is now waving a red flag once again…

The message of weakening demand on the oil front was reinforced by the falling price of copper.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Global Heatwave Is About to Hit Your Wallet

July 26, 2018

A combine harvester cuts a field of rapeseed in the U.K. Major crops are expected to be smaller due to dry conditions. Photographer: Bloomberg Creative Photos/Bloomberg

The Global Heatwave Is About to Hit Your Wallet

Scorching weather across the globe makes fields too dry for crops, rivers too warm to cool power plants, and leaves wind turbines idle – and it’s pushing commodities prices higher

Commodity producers are having a summer to remember, for all the wrong reasons.

A heatwave across swathes of North America, Europe and Asia, coupled with a worsening drought in some areas, is causing spikes in the prices of anything from wheat to electricity. Cotton plants are stunted in parched Texas fields, French rivers are too warm to effectively cool nuclear reactors and the Russian wheat crop is faltering.

The scorching heat is extracting a heavy human cost – contributing to floods in Japan and Laos and wildfires near Athens. Relief from soaring temperatures, which topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Arctic Circle, may not arrive for at least two weeks.

It’s a timely reminder of the vulnerability of global commodity markets to the changing climate, as human activity disrupts the behavior of plants, animals and the march of the seasons.

Grain Pain

Wheat prices surge to a three-year high as the heatwave hurts Europe’s crop

Source: Euronext

The heat and lack of rainfall is pummeling crops across Europe as far as the Black Sea. Output in Russia, the world’s top wheat exporter, is set to fall for the first time in six years, while concerns continue to mount about smaller crops in key growers such as France and Germany. Wheat futures for December have jumped almost 10 percent in the past month in Paris, with prices this week reaching the highest since the contract started trading in 2015.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Inflation or Employment

May 2, 2018

INFLATION OR EMPLOYMENT

Inflationary fears are growing and US rates continue to rise
Employment has become more flexible since the crisis of 2008/2009
Commodity prices have risen but from multi-year lows
During the next recession job losses will rapidly temper inflationary pressures

Given the official policy response to the Great Financial Recession – a mixture of central bank balance sheet expansion, lower for longer interest rates and a general lack of fiscal rectitude on the part of developed nation governments – I believe there are two factors which are key for stock markets over the next few years, inflation and employment. The fact that these also happen to be the two mandated targets of the Federal Reserve – full employment and price stability – is more than coincidental. My struggle is in attempting to decide whether demand-pull inflation can survive the impact of a rapid rise in unemployment come the next recession.

Inflation and the Central Bankers response is clearly the new narrative of the financial markets. In his latest essay, Ben Hunt of Salient Partners makes some fascinating observations – Epsilon Theory: The Narrative Giveth and The Narrative Taketh Away:-

This market, like all markets, cares about two things and two things only — the price of money and the real return on invested capital. Or, as they are typically represented in cartoon form, interest rates and growth.

…This market, like all markets, needs a positive narrative on risk (the price of money) or reward (the real return on capital) to go up. Any narrative will do! But when neither risk nor reward is represented with a positive narrative, this market, like all markets, will go down. And that’s where we are today.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Betting on Deflation May Be a Huge Mistake. Here’s Why…

January 5, 2016

Betting on Deflation May Be a Huge Mistake. Here’s Why…

Precious Metals Market Update

Precious metals investors heading into 2016 worry the dollar will continue marching ahead, right over the top of gold and silver prices. The Fed is telegraphing additional rate hikes throughout the year, and commodity prices – led by crude oil – are falling. There have been tremors in the biggest beneficiary markets of all when it comes to the Fed’s QE largesse – U.S. equities and real estate. And the possibility of a recession is growing, both in the U.S. and around the world.

There are plenty of reasons we might see even lower official inflation numbers and a stronger dollar in 2016. But don’t think for a second that consumer prices or living costs will fall. They haven’t, they aren’t, and they never will in a sustained way – thanks to the Fed’s creation in 1913. This is where the deflationists have it wrong.

The impact of further disinflationary forces or even a deflationary episode on precious metals prices is a bit harder to predict.

The bear case for precious metals is rather simple. Should metals trade like commodities, they are likely to follow other raw materials lower. If we get a liquidity crunch akin to the 2008 financial crisis, just about everything will be sold as investors raise cash to meet margin calls or flee to the dollar as a perceived safe-haven.

There is also the possibility that metals prices will simply be managed lower. Growing numbers of investors realize that Wall Street is not a bulwark of free markets. Major banks have admitted to rigging markets against their own customers, and the Federal Reserve aggressively intervenes in markets in its quest to centrally plan the world economy. Why wouldn’t the Fed also be active in trading precious metals? Those dismissing the notion that metals prices are manipulated are naive.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We are at Peak Oil now; we need very low-cost energy to fix it

December 22, 2015

We are at Peak Oil now; we need very low-cost energy to fix it

This past week, I gave a presentation to a group interested in a particular type of renewable energy–solar energy that is deployed in space, so it would provide electricity 24 hours per day. Their question was: how low does the production cost of electricity really need to be?

I gave them this two-fold answer:

1. We are hitting something similar to “Peak Oil” right now. The symptoms are the opposite of the ones that most people expected. There is a glut of supply, and prices are far below the cost of production. Many commodities besides oil are affected; these include natural gas, coal, iron ore, many metals, and many types of food. Our concern should be that low prices will bring down production, quite possibly for many commodities simultaneously. Perhaps the problem should be called “Limits to Growth,” rather than “Peak Oil,” because it is a different type of problem than most people expected.

2. The only theoretical solution would be to create a huge supply of renewable energy that would work in today’s devices. It would need to be cheap to produce and be available in the immediate future. Electricity would need to be produced for no more than four cents per kWh, and liquid fuels would need to be produced for less than $20 per barrel of oil equivalent. The low cost would need to be the result of very sparing use of resources, rather than the result of government subsidies.

Of course, we have many other problems associated with a finite world, including rising population, water limits, and climate change. For this reason, even a huge supply of very cheap renewable energy would not be a permanent solution.

This is a link to the presentation: Energy Economics Outlook. I will not attempt to explain the slides in detail.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Plunging Commodities Interfere With The New World Order

December 9, 2015

Plunging Commodities Interfere With The New World Order

Anglo American, a British company, and one of the world’s biggest miners, and a ‘producer’ (actually just a miner, how did those two terms ever get mixed up?!) of platinum (world no. 1), diamonds, copper, nickel, iron ore and coal, said today it would scrap dividends AND fire 85,000 of it 135,000 global workforce (that’s 63%!). Anglo is just the first in a long litany line we’ll see going forward. Commodities ‘producers’ are being completely wiped out, hammered, killed, murdered. They’ve been able to hedge their downside risks so far, but now find they can’t even afford the price of the hedges (insurance) anymore. And then there’s all the banks and funds that financed them.

And they’ve all been gearing up for production increases too, with grandiose plans and -leveraged- investments aiming for infinity and beyond. You know, it’s the business model. 2016 will be a year for the record books.

Just check this Bloomberg graph for copper supply and demand as an example. How ugly would you like it today?

And what’s true for copper goes for the whole range of raw materials. Because China went from double-digit growth to shrinking imports and exports in pretty much no time flat. And China was all they had left.

Iron ore is dropping below $40, and that’s about the break-even point. Of course, oil has done that quite a while ago already. It’s just that we like to think oil’s some kind of stand-alone freak incident. It is not. With oil today plunging below $37 (down some 15% since the OPEC meeting last week), it doesn’t matter anymore how much more efficient shale companies can get.

They’re toast. They’re done. And with them are their lenders. Who have hedged their bets too, obviously, but hedging has a price. Or else you could throw money at any losing enterprise.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Counterintuitive: (Some) volatility is good for you, stability not so much

August 23, 2015

Counterintuitive: (Some) volatility is good for you, stability not so much

With stock markets around the world plunging and commodity prices in free fall, it seems appropriate to return to a theme which I’ve taken up previously: That a certain amount of volatility is good for humans and the systems they build, and that attempts to stifle the natural and healthy volatility of a system can lead to greater and even catastrophic volatility in the end.

All of this runs counter to the propaganda with which we are regaled on a daily basis. For example, investors are told that the lower the volatility of their portfolios, the lower the risk. But, in 2008 that turned out not to be true. More recently, as volatility in the widely watched S&P 500 settled down to historic lows this year, investors believed that the magic of low volatility was here to stay. Central banks–through their periodic interventions when markets began to fall–had somehow engineered a no-lose situation for investors. It was going to be clear sailing ahead for…well, forever if you listen to Wall Street.

The history of volatility in markets and in life suggests that high volatility lies just around the bend after a prolonged period of low volatility. It is impossible to say what would trigger the kind of crash we saw in 2008. For now, the Chinese stock market crash and recent negative economic news in China and the United States have unnerved many investors. The Chinese stock market is now more than halfway to a 2008-style meltdown. Stocks in Europe and the United States have finally started to fall in earnest after holding up and even advancing in the face ofmajor declines in emerging markets such as Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Turkey. Money rushed from the emerging markets to major developed economies looking for–you guessed it–stability.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Commodities Collapsed Just Before The Last Stock Market Crash – So Guess What Is Happening Right Now?

July 23, 2015

Commodities Collapsed Just Before The Last Stock Market Crash – So Guess What Is Happening Right Now?

If we were going to see a stock market crash in the United States in the fall of 2015 (to use a hypothetical example), we would expect to see commodity prices begin to crash a few months ahead of time. This is precisely what happened just before the great financial crisis of 2008, and we are watching the exact same thing happen again right now. On Wednesday, commodities got absolutely pummeled, and at this point the Bloomberg Commodity Index is down a whopping 26 percent over the past twelve months. When global economic activity slows down, demand for raw materials sinks and prices drop. So important global commodities such as copper, iron ore, aluminum, zinc, nickel, lead, tin and lumber are all considered to be key “leading indicators” that can tell us a lot about where things are heading next. And what they are telling us right now is that we are rapidly approaching a global economic meltdown.

If the global economy was actually healthy and expanding, the demand for commodities would be increasing and that would tend to drive prices up. But instead, prices continue to go down.

The Bloomberg Commodity Index just hit a brand new 13-year low. That means that global commodity prices are already lower than they were during the worst moments of the last financial crisis…

The commodities rout that’s pushed prices to a 13-year lowpulled some of the biggest mining and energy companies below levels seen during the financial crisis.

The FTSE 350 Mining Index plunged as much as 4.9 percent to the lowest since 2009 on Wednesday, with BHP Billiton Ltd. and Anglo American Plc leading declines. Gold and copper are near the lowest in at least five years, while crude oil retreated to $50 a barrel.

“This commodity bear market is like a train wreck in slow motion,” said Andy Pfaff, the chief investment officer for commodities at MitonOptimal in Cape Town. “It has a lot of momentum and doesn’t come to a sudden stop.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Nine Reasons Why Low Oil Prices May “Morph” Into Something Much Worse

July 23, 2015

Nine Reasons Why Low Oil Prices May “Morph” Into Something Much Worse

Why are commodity prices, including oil prices, lagging? Ultimately, it comes back to the question, “Why isn’t the world economy making very many of the end products that use these commodities?” If workers were getting rich enough to buy new homes and cars, demand for these products would be raising the prices of commodities used to build and operate cars, including the price of oil. If governments were rich enough to build an increasing number of roads and more public housing, there would be demand for the commodities used to build roads and public housing.

It looks to me as though we are heading into a deflationary depression, because prices of commodities are falling below the cost of extraction. We need rapidly rising wages and debt if commodity prices are to rise back to 2011 levels or higher. This isn’t happening. Instead, Janet Yellen is talking about raising interest rates later this year, and we are seeing commodity prices fall further and further. Let me explain some pieces of what is happening.

1. We have been forcing economic growth upward since 1981 through the use of falling interest rates. Interest rates are now so low that it is hard to force rates down further, to encourage further economic growth.

Falling interest rates are hugely beneficial for the economy. If interest rates stop dropping, or worse yet, begin to rise, we will lose this very beneficial factor affecting the economy. The economy will tend to grow even less quickly, bringing down commodity prices further. The world economy may even start contracting, as it heads into a deflationary depression.

If we look at 10-year US treasury interest rates, there has been a steep fall in rates since 1981.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BP Data Suggests We Are Reaching Peak Energy Demand

June 24, 2015

BP Data Suggests We Are Reaching Peak Energy Demand

Some people talk about peak energy (or oil) supply. They expect high prices and more demand than supply. Other people talk about energy demand hitting a peak many years from now, perhaps when most of us have electric cars.

Neither of these views is correct. The real situation is that we right now seem to be reaching peak energy demand through low commodity prices. I see evidence of this in the historical energy data recently updated by BP (BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2015). Of course,

Growth in world energy consumption is clearly slowing. In fact, growth in energy consumption was only 0.9% in 2014. This is far below the 2.3% growth we would expect, based on recent past patterns. In fact, energy consumption in 2012 and 2013 also grew at lower than the expected 2.3% growth rate (2012 – 1.4%; 2013 – 1.8%).

Recently, I wrote that economic growth eventually runs into limits. The symptoms we should expect are similar to the patterns we have been seeing recently (Why We Have an Oversupply of Almost Everything (Oil, labor, capital, etc.)). It seems to me that the patterns in BP’s new data are also of the kind that we would expect to be seeing, if we are hitting limits that are causing low commodity prices.

One of our underlying problems is that energy costs that have risen faster than most worker’s wages since 2000. Another underlying problem has to do with globalization. Globalization provides a temporary benefit. In the last 20 years, we greatly ramped up globalization, but we are now losing the temporary benefit globalization brings. We find we again need to deal with the limits of a finite world and the constraints such a world places on growth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hounded by Evil Dollar & Collapsed Commodity Prices, Corporate America Clamors for Total Currency War

January 28, 2015

Hounded by Evil Dollar & Collapsed Commodity Prices, Corporate America Clamors for Total Currency War

Consumers are feeling practically euphoric. The Conference Board index jumped almost ten points to 102.9, the highest since August 2007, just before the whole construct came apart. Not that reality has suddenly improved that much. But hey, we’re born survivors. Sooner or later, we adjust to lower real incomes and reduced standards of living and start feeling good again.

This exuberance came just as our largest corporate citizens were hit by a tornado of problems that sank the stock market for the day: currency volatility, crashing commodities prices, disappearing XP computers, farmers switching from corn to wheat…. It was all there.

Freeport-McMoRan, one of the largest copper producers in the world, reported an 11% drop in revenues for the fourth quarter and a salty $2.85 billion loss, which included $3.4 billion in losses for its oil and gas business that it got into via two impeccably-timed acquisitions in 2013. The depressed price of copper isn’t helping. It cut its 2015 budget by $2 billion and might cut it some more. Shares dropped 6%.

Long-suffering Peabody Energy, the largest coal producer in the US, reported a net loss for the quarter of $566 million on revenues that declined 3.3%. It projected a much wider loss than expected for the first quarter and cut its dividends to nearly nothing. It’s all about preserving cash and hanging on in a desperately tough pricing environment for coal producers. Shares dropped 6.5% to $6.24, down from $72 during the glory days in early 2011.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will There Be Forced Official Sellers of Gold? |

December 7, 2014

Will There Be Forced Official Sellers of Gold? |.

Possible Side-Effects of Plunging Commodity Prices – A Look at Russia

One of our readers wrote to us with a question on a topic that will surely be of interest to a wider audience. Here is what he asked:

“As FX reserves dwindle, surely there is some potential that Russia may be forced seller of Gold? I understand your views re gold market, but would be most interested to hear your thoughts on the possible impact? Are there other options? Talk of gold backed RUB, default on USD debts, etc.

It is clear that a number of major oil producers are in severe trouble. However, Russia’s central bank has actually increased its gold reserves in recent months. It is now the world’s 5^th largest official holder of gold, after increasing its stock pile to 1,150 tons in September (the most recent data available).

To this it must be kept in mind that Russia itself is a major producer of gold, the third largest in the world in fact, mining about 250 tons per year. The central bank is involved in the marketing of this gold, acting as an intermediary for producers. Still, in spite of increasing its gold reserves quite a bit, they still only represent about 10% of Russia’s total reserves. Here is by the way a chart of gold in ruble terms:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: commodity prices

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Possible Side-Effects of Plunging Commodity Prices – A Look at Russia

Latest Posts