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David Fuller and Eoin Treacy's Comment of the Day
Category - Precious Metals / Commodities

    Ramaphosa Cuts Short Trip as Power Crisis Grips South Africa

    This article by Paul Vecchiatto and Liezel Hill for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    South African President Cyril Ramaphosa cut short a trip abroad to deal with an escalating crisis at the state power company, which imposed a sixth day of blackouts that threaten to tip the economy into recession.

    The rand declined the most in a month Tuesday as Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. said there’s a high likelihood of power cuts all week and mining companies including Sibanye Gold Ltd., the world’s biggest platinum producer, temporarily halted operations. Vodacom Group Ltd., the nation’s biggest mobile operator, said the outages are disrupting its service.

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    Precious Metals: Turning around a historically unprofitable sector

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from RBC Capital Markets which may be of interest. Here is a section:

    Email of the day from a coffee insider

    The estimate of the Brazilian coffee crop of 2019 is 49 million bags of 60 kg This means a 20 % drop from 2018, when Brazil produced a record crop of 62 million bags. This is a big difference. But it is due to the fact, first that Brazil is in the “off-year” of its two-year coffee production cycle, which alternates between years of high and low production cycles. The coffee trees are resting one in two years. Second, there has been irregular weather that was not good for the crop. And third, the farmers are diminishing the crop care because of prices that have fallen too low. This is happening after a bumper “on-year” which brought a collapse of prices. The influence of Brazil on the world coffee market is important because it is the largest producer. (62 million bags on a total world production of 175 million bags). But in the other countries the same causes have most of the time had the same effect.

    What must be noticed also is that very low prices because of overproduction were normal to a certain extent, but as always, investment funds and speculators (or call these also investors with a euphemism) went about 51.000 contracts short (equals 12.750.000 bags) and then suddenly reduced these short positions to about 17.000. This of course amplifies the movements of the market, this time to higher but still not normal prices. In the meantime, the farmers are starving with a daily income of 3 dollars, flee their central American countries and try to get in the U.S. It’s a shame, a hard world. That’s why in my company we promote Fair Trade Coffee, now at about the double of the price of the market. We are making nearly half of our turnover with this coffee.

    The Real is also an important parameter, but it is not the only one. The two charts of coffee and Real are often linked, but not always when such fundamental events are happening;

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    Trump Ties Brazil, Argentina Steel Tariffs to U.S. Farm Woes

    This article by Brendan Murray and Joe Deaux for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Linking his trade agenda with his Fed criticism in an early morning tweet, he said the two South American countries “have been presiding over a massive devaluation of their currencies, which is not good for our farmers.”

    The president’s action amounts to retaliation against two nations that have become alternative suppliers of soybeans and other agricultural products to China, grabbing market share away from the U.S. Rural voters, including farmers, are a key constituency for Trump as he heads into the 2020 presidential elections.

    While the steel tariffs could crimp trade, the Latin American countries gain much more shipping crops to Chinese buyers. In the first 10 months of the year, Brazil has shipped $25.5 billion in farm products including soybeans and pork to China. That’s more than 10 times the value of steel and iron product sold to the U.S.

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    Gold Is New Obsession for East Europe's Nationalist Leaders

    This article by Andrea Dudik and Radoslav Tomek for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

     

    Instead, he said he wanted to demonstrate the strength of his nation’s $586 billion economy -- the largest in the EU’s east. Poland has doubled its gold holdings in the past two years and now has the region’s biggest stockpile.

    Hungary, though, has been an active buyer too. Gold reserves surged 10-fold last year, setting the clamor for the metal in the countries around it in motion. Serbia’s strongman leader Aleksandar Vucic took note, ordering the central bank to boost reserves and prompting the purchase of nine tons in October. Vucic said last week that more should be bought because “we see in which direction the crisis in the world is moving.”

    The biggest nation to emerge from the breakup of Yugoslavia still keeps some of its gold abroad, the central bank said by email. The region is buying more of the metal because of global uncertainty over trade and politics, Brexit and low interest rates, it said.

    Romania had also sought to relocate some of its gold reserves from the U.K., but those plans were put on hold when the government behind them was ousted in October.

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    Why the Narratives around Oil Supply and Demand are Wrong

    This article by Goehring & Rozencwajg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Investors remain very concerned about the impact of slowing economic growth on global oil demand. While Q2 did show some softening, there have been several very bullish developments that most investors seem to ignore. For example, analysts focused all of their attention on the IEA’s recent downward revision of 2020 global demand projections by 100,000 b/d over the course of the last three months. However, at the same time, the IEA quietly revised historical demand higher by 190,000 b/d in 2017 and 110,000 b/d in 2018–a fact that few people wrote about. Notably, Q4 of 2018 was revised higher by a very large 300,000 b/d.

    Our models tell us that more revisions are forthcoming. As always, our analysis revolves around the “missing” barrels. For example, the IEA still claims after its latest set of historical revisions that global demand for all of 2018 equaled 99.3 mm b/d while total supply equaled 100.3 mm b/d. This suggests that inventories should have grown by 1 mm b/d or 365 mm b for the full year. Instead, the IEA reports that inventories were unchanged for the year. We refer to the “missing” barrels as oil that was produced but neither consumed nor put in storage. We have long argued that “missing barrels” are a clear indicator that the IEA will revise higher its demand figures and once again that has been correct.

    The IEA has a long history of demand underestimation. In eight of the last nine years, they have been forced to revise global demand higher by 1.1 m b/d on average (a number that is creeping higher). Despite this chronic underestimation and the continued presence of “missing barrels,” investors continue to ignore the warning signs of stronger than expected demand.

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    Gold Rush how the safe haven asset shines by enhancing portfolio returns and reducing drawdown risks

    Thanks to a subscriber for this report from Citigroup which may be of interest. Here is a section:

    Sputtering China Growth Underscores Need for Trade Reprieve

    This article from Bloomberg news may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    The investment data shows how cautious private companies have become, with their spending in the first 10 months of the year at the lowest level since 2016. The continued stability in spending by state-owned firms’ is preventing an even stronger drop in the headline data.

    Investment in the property market is one bright spot, with spending by the manufacturing sector barely above the record low recorded in September. Infrastructure investment growth continued to bounce along around 4% as it has all year.

    “I’m quite concerned with property investment, the only stable element in fixed-asset investment now,” according to Xue Zhou, analyst at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd in Hong Kong. “Monetary policy needs to be more supportive on economic growth and there should be more cuts to banks’ reserve ratios to help smaller banks.”

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    Wall Street Is Wrong About Negative Interest Rates

    This article by Ferdinando Giugliano for Bloomberg may be of interest to subscribers. Here is a section:

    Finally, there’s little evidence that negative rates have held back lending. A recent ECB working paper shows deposits with commercial lenders have increased since the central bank introduced negative deposit rates. At the same time, companies with large cash holdings have cut their deposits and invested more. That’s exactly the goal of this policy.

    In fact, banks that pass on negative rates to customers appear to provide more credit than other lenders. This suggests that, contrary to what those Wall Street titans say, the problem with negative rates is that not enough banks inflict them on their clients.

    It’s certainly possible that monetary policy becomes less effective as central banks cut interest rates deeper into negative territory. Gauti Eggertsson of Brown University and Larry Summers of Harvard have looked at Sweden, a pioneer in cutting rates below zero. They concluded that while its first two negative moves reduced lending rates, this wasn’t repeated after two later cuts.

    However, similar diminishing returns are seen in other unorthodox measures, including asset purchases. The authors also acknowledge that the rate cuts might have boosted Sweden’s economy via other channels, for example by depreciating the krona, allowing the government to borrow more and boosting asset prices.

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