Commodities Articles

In a world dominated by all things technology-related, it’s been easy for investors to forget about real assets. Until recently, many did. But recently, a noteworthy shift began back toward the precious metals, commodities, infrastructure, and real estate of the real assets world. Their appeal is intuitively easy to understand. It’s their tangibility, while historically they’ve been viewed as inflation hedges and diversifiers.

Have you ever met a true permabear? It sometimes seems like this pessimistic breed of investors are preprogramed to celebrate all bad news and criticise all good news.

You’ll have noticed that Trump’s presidency has started with Change with a capital C. He’s breaking laws, circumventing Congress, and encouraging Elon Musk to dismantle government departments. Most legal scholars agree the US is in a constitutional crisis. Amidst the chaos, Trump announced he’s introducing a Sovereign Wealth Fund. The idea has been mooted for some time so this wasn’t a surprise, but it may mean more to investors that is apparent at this juncture…

Trump talked a big game on tariffs during his journey back to the White House. ‘If I’m going to be president of this country, I’m going to put a 100, 200, 2,000 per cent tariff,’ on cars from Mexico he forewarned. He went so far as to describe tariffs ‘as the most beautiful word in the dictionary.’ Investors should prepare for two uglier words...

Money has been flowing into commodities this year due to persistent high inflation and geopolitical tensions, prompting investors to seek strategic, inflation-proof assets.

Financial markets thrive on long term correlations holding for the simple reason it provides high-probability context for investors to make investment decisions. So when a long term correlation breaks down that most investors thought made financial and intuitive sense, it’s generally worth delving deeper.

Gold investors seem to be a dying breed. With momentum-focused investors increasingly focused upon AI-focused opportunities at the expense of all other sectors, it’s easy to see why. Age is also a factor. Some younger investors question whether the gold investment case carries as much weight in an era when digital solutions dominate. But what if the market is dismissing gold at the very moment it’s about to break out and prove its role as an important portfolio diversifier?

It won’t have escaped most investors’ attention that lithium continues to reign supreme as the market’s hottest commodity. Lithium stocks such as Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) and Allkem (ASX:AKE) are once again amongst the strongest performers on the ASX year to date. As with all investment themes, it’s worth delving deeper than the lithium headlines and associated stock outperformance to understand the longer term investment case.

Throughout 2022, investors were reminded by a number of market experts that most commodities were in chronic undersupply. “Buy the chemical table”, was the advice given by more than one strategist who believed we were at the start of a new commodities supercycle.

Uranium is a commodity which tends to inspire impassioned debate amongst investors and the population at large. Some remember Chernobyl and Fukushima and retain a blanket negativity toward nuclear energy and uranium as a result.

It’s been used as a symbol of prestige and authority for thousands of years. The earliest coins minted by a central bank were made from gold. It has applications in electronics, dentistry, aerospace and medical industries. Demand for gold as a decorative item hasn’t waned since the time of Ancient Egypt. But given most gold is just hoarded in the vaults of central banks, is it actually useful?