Industrial commodity bulls may be advised to steer clear of the latest quarterly commodities update by Global Tactical Asset Allocation’s Damien Cleusix whose conclusion is that “Most commodities remain deeply overvalued.” Specifically, “As with other assets it does not really matter in the short-term (as long as the trend is positive) but it is paramount for longer-term projections. We have little doubts that commodity long-only who buy to hold are going to experience a > 50% drawdown (from current levels) on their industrial metals, crude oil and agricultural positions sometimes in the next 12-18 months.” The catalyst: China. “Demand has been artificially boosted by China strategic reserve building, infrastructure intensive fiscal stimulus, booming demand from the rest of emerging economies and, as the trend persisted, by trend followers and money managers new attraction to the sector (you know it is not correlated so you should buy them to diversify your portfolio… sorry it WAS not correlated…). The introduction of physically-based ETFs is not helping in this matter as it represents a big short-term increase in marginal demand especially when the Fed was still busy implementing QE2.” Agree or not, the cases for both the up and downside are compelling and well researched, with lots of supporting facts. Much more in the full presentation.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/global-tactical-asset-allocation-q3-update-commodities