Commodities Supercycle Looks Like A Stretch
Investors bet against history and predict a surge over extended period.
Investors bet against history and predict a surge over extended period.
Commodity markets are roaring, stirring a debate about whether prices are headed for an extended upswing. The history of booms and busts in raw materials suggests the conditions aren’t right.
Prices for Brent crude, the international benchmark in energy markets, have jumped 82% since the end of October. Copper is more expensive than it has been since 2011. Food hasn’t cost as much since 2014, according to a United Nations index.
Some investors and analysts say commodities are in the early stages of a supercycle. That is a period when prices of livestock, grains, metals, oil and gas all climb for years, even decades.
A prolonged upturn would present investors with an opportunity to make money from long-term bets on exchange-traded products that track commodity prices. Such vehicles bloomed in popularity when commodity markets soared in the 2000s and early 2010s, only to fall out of favour when prices tanked in 2014.
But the chances of commodity prices rising in tandem over a long period are slim. Such cycles are rare. They have occurred when a major economy such as the U.S. or China undergoes rapid industrialization or urbanization, creating demand for raw materials that existing supplies struggle to meet.
Economists say they don’t see a similar catalyst right now. A swift expansion in the global economy this year and next is likely to power demand. Beyond that, many analysts see oil consumption, in particular, slowing down.
“It pays investors, it pays policy makers to be a little bit sceptical of characterizing the developments of the past six to 12 months as the seeds of a new supercycle,” said David Jacks, a professor at Singapore’s Yale-NUS College who has studied the history of commodity markets.
Commodity prices are an important barometer for financial markets. Rising gasoline and energy costs contributed to a modest increase in the rate of U.S. inflation earlier this year. Expectations of a leap in consumer prices sent bond yields surging in recent weeks and cooled corners of the stock market.
When resources’ prices swing higher for an extended period, one of three things happens. The first is an economic shock, such as the recession in the 1970s, caused in part by the Arab oil embargo. The second is a rush of supply as miners, energy producers and farmers seek to cash in. Over time, people switch to cheaper alternatives.
Adjusting for inflation, U.S. crude prices in 2020 were well below their peaks from 2008 and 1980, though they were more than double the 1945 level, according to data compiled by Mr Jacks. Inflation-adjusted grain prices have dropped since World War II due to advances in crop science, Mr Jacks said.
The last supercycle occurred from the late 1990s, when a rapid expansion of cities and industry in China unleashed waves of demand for natural resources, according to Daniel Jerrett, chief investment officer at Stategy Capital LP. Supply was slow to respond and commodity prices, adjusting for inflation, shot up.
“Is there anything out there like that now? I don’t see it,” Mr Jerrett said.
The China-led supercycle kicked off with crude-oil and copper prices at their lowest level in more than a decade. That isn’t the case now: Copper prices, for instance, are close to record highs.
The current outlook for commodity prices is especially complicated because of a number of competing forces.
Some commodities have been swept up in the “everything rally’’ phenomenon. The roaring market for assets from stocks to bitcoin suggests investors are flush with cash and speculating that prices will keep rising. An influx of money into precious metals has started to reverse, showing how fast money can flow back out.
A big unknown is how the drive to cut carbon emissions shifts supply and demand for different commodities. Switching to cleaner sources of energy will likely turbocharge purchases of materials such as copper and nickel, bulls contend. Before those efforts choke off demand for gasoline and diesel, a dearth of investment in the oil industry could buoy crude prices, too.
For now, however, the oil market remains on life support from members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia, which are holding millions of barrels of crude in the ground each day to bolster prices.
The production cuts and a recovery in demand in China and India have helped oil prices rebound since crashing last spring. Brent crude futures have gained a third this year to about $69 a barrel. Some investors are betting they could surpass their all-time high of $148 a barrel in 2008.
U.S. production won’t keep up with the recovery in consumption due to restrictions on drilling on federal lands and belt-tightening by producers, said Christyan Malek, head of oil and gas research at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Cutting emissions at wells will boost production costs, and big oil companies are investing in renewable-energy sources instead of crude, he added.
The world’s biggest independent oil trader doesn’t see an imminent supply crunch. “We have plenty of reserves in the ground, we have plenty of refining capacity and we have plenty of ships to move oil,” said Giovanni Serio, head of research at Vitol.
Copper prices have leapt 67% over the past year to about $9,100 a metric ton on the London Metal Exchange. Goldman Sachs Group sees them hitting an all-time high of $10,500 in the next 12 months, in part because the energy transition will require metals that store and transmit power.
There are bumps in the road. Metal prices are the beneficiary of booming demand for goods and the economy’s emergence from lockdown. Both fillips are likely to fade. Also, it will be years before green infrastructure and technologies devour metals such as lithium at a pace that propels prices upward, analysts say.
Traders say there is plenty of copper available right now. Teck Resources Ltd., Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. and others, meanwhile, are due to start producing at new mines in the next few years.
The current run-up in metal prices in part reflects the same forces that have driven the past year’s recovery in stocks and corporate bonds.
“Fiscal and monetary stimulus has underpinned the rally since last March,” said Tom Mulqueen, head of research at Amalgamated Metal Trading Ltd. “There’s just more money in financial markets.”
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As geopolitical tensions rise, Taiwan is shifting its economy to rely more on the U.S. and other countries but at a cost
TAIPEI—For years, Beijing hoped to win control of Taiwan by convincing its people their economic futures were inextricably tied to China.
Instead, more Taiwanese businesses are pivoting to the U.S. and other markets, reducing the island democracy’s dependence on China and angering Beijing as it sees its economic leverage over Taiwan ebb.
In one sign of the shift, the U.S. replaced mainland China as the top buyer of Taiwanese agricultural products for the first time last year.
Electronics firms such as chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. are also selling more goods to American and other non-Chinese buyers, thanks in part to Washington’s chip restrictions and Apple’s bets on Taiwanese chips.
Overall, Taiwanese exports to the U.S. in the first 10 months of 2023 were more than 80% higher than in the same period of 2018, Taiwanese government data shows. Taiwanese exports to the mainland were 1% lower—a major change from a decade or so ago when China’s and Taiwan’s economies were rapidly integrating.
Taiwan’s outbound investment has also shifted. After flowing mostly to mainland China in the early 2000s, it has now moved decisively toward other destinations, including Southeast Asia, India and the U.S.
Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn, which assembles iPhones in mainland China, is expanding in India and Vietnam after Apple began pushing its suppliers to diversify.
Chinese state media recently reported that China had opened tax and land-use probes into Foxconn. Though Taiwanese officials and analysts interpreted the probes as a sign that China wants Foxconn founder Terry Gou to drop plans to run in Taiwan’s presidential election in January, some have said Beijing may also be trying to pressure Foxconn into resisting decoupling with China.
“Any attempt to ‘talk down’ the mainland’s economy or to seek ‘decoupling’ is driven by ulterior motives and will be futile,” said a spokeswoman for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office in September. “The mainland is always the best choice for Taiwanese compatriots and businesses.”
Fully decoupling from mainland China’s economy likely isn’t possible, and would be disastrous for Taiwan, not to mention China, even if it were.
Foxconn and other major Taiwanese companies depend heavily on China for parts, testing and buyers. Some 25% of Taiwan’s electronic-parts imports still come from the mainland.
If China’s weakened economy returns to strong growth, it could shift the calculus back in favor of the mainland, where the Communist Party claims Taiwan despite never having ruled it. About 21% of Taiwan’s total goods trade this year has been with mainland China, versus 14% for the U.S., though the U.S. share has risen from 11% in 2018.
“My hunch is that the large manufacturing sectors will try to stay in the Chinese market, even with harsh conditions,” said Alexander Huang, director of the international affairs department of the opposition Kuomintang Party, whose supporters include business people with mainland ties. “If you talk to those business owners, they say, ‘Nah, no way will I give it to my competitors.’”
Even so, many forces are pushing Taiwan to rewire its economic relationship with China.
Trump-era tariffs and Biden administration export controls have raised the cost of sourcing from China, and in some cases prohibited it. U.S. firms are pushing their Taiwanese suppliers to diversify sourcing, and rising wages in China have made it less attractive than before.
Long-running shifts in Taiwanese sentiment toward China—and China’s own efforts to punish the island using its economic leverage—are also factors. China has banned Taiwanese agricultural products such as pineapple and, in 2022, grouper fish, and restricted outbound tourism to Taiwan.
Those restrictions to some degree have backfired, pushing Taiwanese businesses to look elsewhere.
Chang Chia-sheng, who runs a fish farming operation in Taiwan, said his main export target a decade ago was mainland China. But as geopolitical tensions climbed, he looked elsewhere. Sales to Americans have jumped fivefold since 2018, he said. “In the U.S., things just seem to work out more easily,” Chang said.
The U.S. and Taiwan reached an agreement in May on a number of trade and investment measures to deepen ties, though the deal stopped short of reducing tariffs.
In the June quarter of 2023, 63% of revenue at TSMC, which makes most of the world’s most cutting-edge logic chips, came from the U.S., up from 54% in the same period in 2018, according to S&P Global data. Just 12% of TSMC’s revenue now comes from Chinese buyers, down from 22% in the second quarter of 2018.
Taiwan’s government is also encouraging closer economic links with Southeast Asia, South Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Its “New Southbound Policy,” rolled out in 2016, has been the subject of fierce debate in Taiwan, with the Kuomintang Party saying steps to boost relations—like handing out scholarships—aren’t worth the cost.
Exports to “New Southbound” partners have risen, however, to $66 billion in the first nine months of 2023, about 50% higher than the same period in 2016.
“Frankly speaking, we’re responding reactively” to the need for more diverse trading partners, Taiwan’s Economic Minister Wang Mei-hua said. “Taiwan needs to manage the risks on its own, but we also need our allies to join us more in mitigating these risks.”
Together, the U.S. and the six largest Southeast Asian economies accounted for 36% of Taiwanese exports in the third quarter of 2023, according to data from CEIC, surpassing the percentage sent to mainland China and Hong Kong on a quarterly basis for the first time since 2002.
In September, Taiwan sent less than 21% of its exports to the mainland, the lowest percentage since the global financial crisis.
Taiwanese foreign investment into mainland China, steady at around $10 billion a year for most of the early 2010s, plummeted in late 2018 and has since been running at about half that level, according to Taiwanese government data. In 2023 so far, just 13% of Taiwan’s investment went to mainland China; 25% went to other Asian locations, and nearly half went to the U.S.
A survey of Taiwanese businesses conducted last year on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, found that nearly 60% had moved or were considering moving some production or sourcing out of China—a significantly higher rate than European or American firms.
Jay Yen, chief executive of Yen and Brothers, a Taiwanese frozen-food processing company, said his firm received a government subsidy of around $75,000 to market his products to American consumers. China now only accounts for about 3% of its revenue, he said.
That said, “if you really have to consider the risks of a war between the U.S. and China and its potential impact on Taiwan, you might want to place your bets on a third country—neither China nor the U.S.,” Yen added.
After China began to open up its economy in the late 1970s, Taiwanese businesses were among the first investors.
By the 2000s, China seemed to be succeeding in its strategy of integrating the two economies, with more than 28% of Taiwan’s exports going to the mainland in 2010, from less than 4% a decade earlier.
Direct flights between the two sides were normalised for the first time in decades. Mainland tourists were allowed to visit Taiwan on their own.
By 2014, the tide was turning as more Taiwanese grew worried about over dependence on China. Student demonstrators protested against a trade pact, later abandoned, that would have deepened ties with China. President Tsai Ing-wen, who took office in 2016, has pushed to diversify Taiwan’s economy.
China has responded by moving trade issues more into the spotlight.
In April, it opened an investigation into Taiwanese trade restrictions that it says limit exports of more than 2,400 items from the mainland to the island in violation of World Trade Organization rules. In October, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the probe would be extended until Jan. 12—the day before Taiwan’s coming election.
Taiwan’s government has called the probe politically motivated.
Chinese officials have implied that Beijing could suspend preferential tariff rates for some Taiwanese goods in China under a 2010 deal signed when Kuomintang’s Ma Ying-jeou was president. Beijing has also reacted angrily to Taiwan’s recent trade agreement with the U.S.
For Taiwanese companies, building and operating new factories in places other than China isn’t cheap or easy. Protests have at times disrupted operations at Indian plants operated by Foxconn and Wistron, another Apple supplier. In September, a fire halted production at a Taiwanese facility in Tamil Nadu.
Still, some Taiwanese businesspeople have clearly soured on China.
“The electronics industry has already become a Chinese empire, not a Taiwanese one,” says Leo Chiu, who worked in mainland China in quality control for an electronics manufacturer for 14 years before concluding he couldn’t move up further there and returning to Taiwan in 2019. Many of his old colleagues have left, he said.
“If Xi Jinping steps down, there’s still a chance it could change,” says Chiu. “But I think it’s very hard.”
Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’