Commodities

China’s official sector demand for the metal is strong and forms part of its US dollar diversification programme Third consecutive week of inflows into long oil ETPs. Bargain-hunting continued with WTI and Brent slipping a further 3.5% and 1.9% respectively. A landmark deal struck between Iran and world superpowers to… Read More »

A perfect storm of events has hit oil markets, but mostly just a sentiment move for now. We have been concerned about a number of headwinds and downside risk in oil markets heading into 3Q15 for some time, but our base case has been for Brent to be volatile within… Read More »

The ‘No’ campaign in the Greece’s referendum received more than 60% of votes, emboldening the Greek government’s stance to reject its creditors terms. Gold has surprisingly not reacted to the events but that could change as worst-case scenarios crystalize Inflows into long oil ETPs highest in 14 weeks, as investors… Read More »

The last several years have not been kind to the world’s oil majors1. Production has fallen steadily despite a surge in investment, cost inflation has been rife, and labour productivity has declined Even before the recent collapse in the oil price, return on capital had come under pressure and organic… Read More »

Broad basket commodity ETPs received over 50% of total inflows. With bond and some equity benchmarks seeming stretched, investors appear to be increasingly looking at the relative value of the commodity market and gaining broad based exposure via ETPs that offer a diversified exposure to a number of sectors Agricultural… Read More »

Outside the energy sector, investor sentiment for commodities has softened on the back of concern over the global economic outlook and the volatility that has pervaded financial markets. Volatility has been a ubiquitous force not only across asset classes, but across regions, as uncertainty over the health of the Chinese… Read More »

When you want to integrate an asset class into a diversified portfolio, you base your decisions on mainly 3 factors (in decreasing order of importance): the return, the risk and the correlation to the rest of your portfolio Looking first at return, commodity markets are the only major asset class… Read More »

The OPEC cartel maintained the status quo as widely expected Long natural gas ETPs see highest inflows since December 2014. Bargain hunters drove US$19.2mn into long natural gas ETPs as the price of US natural gas fell a further 3% last week (-7% in the past month). Gas in storage… Read More »

Copper miners’ concentrate processing costs are down 20% year-todate, because of disruptions at key operations. This, in turn, will weigh on smelter revenues, pare smelter output and constrain metal supply – delivering a small boost for the copper price. Copper’s spot treatment and refining charges (TC/RCs) – a fee that… Read More »

Despite a lacklustre performance in Q1 of this year, it increasingly looks like commodities are at a turning point, with most sectors posting gains last month There are a number of reasons to be optimistic about the outlook for commodities in 2015 and heading into 2016. A prolonged period of… Read More »