accidents may happen soon, as volatility increased big time, perhaps ... let's watch and see
in the mean time, a blurb fm stratfor
Global Economy: Commodity Market Jitters
Summary
Global commodity prices are taking a wild ride on the downside.
Analysis
Price crashes struck nearly all of the major commodity markets Jan. 3-4. These decreases occurred across nearly all sectors, affecting energy, metals and even grains. Copper and oil dropped nearly 10 percent, gold 2 percent and corn and wheat 3 percent. The dramatic changes are equal testaments to the interconnectedness of markets and the irrationality of traders.
Global markets are not exactly the most rational creatures. They respond to shocks (real and imagined) and news (important and frivolous), and operate with a bit of a herd mentality. If one oil trader bolts, many tend to follow. When the oil markets freak out, the other markets get jittery. So seeing a broad market move up or down all at once is not particularly unique -- but the size of this movement certainly stands out, and there are a number of rationales behind it.
First and foremost, on Jan. 3 the U.S. Federal Reserve released the minutes from its Dec. 12 meeting, during which the governors candidly discussed the challenges facing the housing market and their collective feeling that inflation was not yet under control. All in all, it was rather standard stuff. But, in general, traders really only want one thing: low interest rates, which bring about rapid growth. So the minutes sparked a fear among traders that the Fed's inflation concerns would keep rates high at the expense of growth, and a broad rout touching nearly every commodity (and stock) market ensued.
This hardly means the Fed is clueless; instead, it indicates that traders still do not (and likely never will) understand that the Fed makes policy for the broader economy -- not just for them.
Then there is the market's structure, particularly in the early days of the year. Most funds that trade in commodities tend to adopt positions that bet on long-term price shifts, not day-to-day adjustments. Thus, when there is a sharp short-term change, they reflexively sell their positions to minimize loss. When these long-term investors move, they create their own reinforcing downdrafts and tend to overshoot anything that might resemble equilibrium.
Add in that we are only in the fourth day of the new year and Europe, the former Soviet Union and Latin America are all still on holiday (and the United States is hardly back to full staffing either), and the automatic nature of these position-changes intensifies. There simply are not enough people in the trading offices to sort through all the information, so prearranged trades are falling to trigger after trigger, largely without supervision or intervention.
But not all the market drops in the past 24 hours are based on irrational fears or extended vacations. It all comes down to two unrelated developments.
First is the weather. The winter in the United States and Europe has been extraordinarily warm so far, leading to lighter-than-normal demand for energy. So, while it might be surprising that oil has slipped by so much (currently about $5 a barrel), the drop itself is logical -- and, dare we say, overdue.
Furthermore, the United States is in a bit of an ethanol craze as efforts to find oil/gasoline substitutes pick up steam. Consequently, Midwestern farmers have increased their commitment to corn production for use as an ethanol feedstock -- which means there is now an oil-corn link. If oil prices plummet, corn suffers as well.
And, in the past 24 hours, the weather has not only been warm, but wet. The Great Plains of the United States have been hit first with heavy rains and then with snowfall -- the perfect conditions to boost winter wheat crop yields. Thus, wheat prices dutifully dropped.
Second, there is the material that led the commodity bull rush all of last year: copper. Since 2004, copper has suffered from extremely thin supplies and strong demand. In the final weeks of 2006, two things changed. Chinese demand for the stuff, while hardly collapsing, moderated somewhat, and efforts to expand output in Chile and Australia were realized, easing the tight supply. Faced with a market (and traders) that was convinced prices could go nowhere but up, such changes gave copper -- at least in the short term -- nowhere to go but down.
Coupled with traders' general herd mentality, the very real shifts in oil, corn, wheat and copper translated into an across-the-board price crash. The only question remaining is how long it will last. |
