What I certainly believe is that the true commodity bull is years away. It will occur after China's infrastructure growth spurt is largely over, and its population turn into consumers: While at the same time India transmogrifies itself into a fledgling first world country by running an infrastructure build and consumer economy in tandem. 2.5 billion people will weigh heavier on global markets than anything we have seen, ever.
Over ten years later and where are we?
Well, India and China are now at 2.8billion - so I was "out" by the population of the USA on that one
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Between then and now there was the BRIC phenomenon, but it seems only the IC have powered through.
On commodities alone there are some very interesting fronts, and the newest are carried-in on electric vehicles.
Lithium has been seen by many as a big power play (excuse pun) with the largest and cheapest producers globally set to continue to do well. Never a race I joined, so shall leave comment on this metal to those better informed. All I know is that from a supply perspective it's well endowed.
Other battery metals become problematic.
Cobalt as a stand alone mine barely exists outside of corrupted African countries, so no joy for me there.
Nickel is doing ok, and could do a lot better as battery chemistry substitutes cobalt for the cheaper nickel metal. LME warehouse levels have been in strong decline for a year, dropping from around 350K tonnes a year ago to 200K tonnes today.
On the EV front, copper demand will continue apace and mine supply looks like struggling when trying to balance this new feed with existing uses of the remarkable metal. Comex warehouse trends look dire compared with LME. Comex has dropped 25k tonnes in the last month (to now sit around 70K tonnes), while LME is up 15K tonnes in the month. This, however hides a 200K decline in the past 12 months. My sense is that the LME warehouses are likely to continue to lose metal through this year. I base this largely on the US/China trade imbroglio which has seen investment decisions take a back seat in recent months.
Lead has been the most recent surprise, dropping over 40K tonnes in 2 months to leave LME warehouses at just under 70K tonnes. I am clueless as to why. However, with LME stocks their lowest for as long as I can recall it's an interesting omen.
My cake icing is zinc. 5 years ago LME zinc levels were in excess of 800k tonnes. Today they are just over 90k tonnes, and falling at an unusual pace. Zinc is significantly an industrial metal, and with such a rate of decline it might be telling us that "business as usual" in the rest of the world really means that metals as a whole are now in a firm state of undersupply.
I will leave iron ore and aluminium out for now, and see if there is another story they are telling.