It is not anybody’s case that the financial commodities markets are operating in an ideal environment of transparency and regulation. In fact over the years, commodity exchanges in London, New York and Chicago have been pressured to exercise increasingly rigorous control on trade and improve transparency. Exchanges by their very nature are to face waves of speculation. But controls are generally well in place to avoid undermining of markets.
Even then concerns are expressed from time about speculation money routed through hedge funds sending prices of commodities, particularly oil and gas and iron ore on roller coaster rides. The speculative phenomenon has been much in evidence in the last two years. It no doubt has got much to do with the challenges faced by governments cutting across stages of development of the countries they represent – the developed world besides, both Beijing and New Delhi launched major stimulus programmes and any rollback is now to be done judiciously – to meet the challenges of 2008-09 recession. At the micro level, the almost felled industries are to first put their house in order and then return to the growth path.
But surprisingly for all the imperfections of the commodities markets, government attention invariably turns to the financial segment where because of very low interest rates speculators are finding it profitable to keep industrial commodities in warehouses.
To give one example, funds control over 80 per cent of about 4.5 million tonnes of aluminium in London Metal Exchange warehouses. Speculation is the reason why the funds are these days particularly active in commodities. No doubt aluminium and copper will have fared worse had not funds snapped up large volumes of metals in anticipation of future gains.
Moves by funds, call that speculation if you want, leave an impact on the market in the short term. Javier Blas writes in Financial Times that “over the medium term, prices in commodity markets respond largely to murky supply, demand and inventories signals. And here is the problem that policymakers are ignoring to the perils of the world economy.”
Not only does Blas point to the common ignorance of physical commodities markets, but more significantly laments the fact of our “worsening” understanding of these. One reason of our poor appreciation of the physical market is the rapid rise of China, South Korea and India as users (and producers too) of bulk commodities, while, as Blas points out, “the statistical and policymaking system was put in place in the 1960s-1970s” when such countries were not players of much significance.
Unfortunately, the system has not been sufficiently radicalised since to truthfully reflect the shift in production and consumption focus from developed to emerging nations. Growth in industrial commodities has been mostly in the East as high costs of labour and energy and also increasingly rigid environmental laws have caused shrinkages in metals production capacities in the West.
While there has been a major shift in action to the developing world since the mid 1980s as far as industrial commodities are concerned, the agencies to collect and analyse demand, supply and stocks data are still to be appropriately geared to precisely monitor movements there.
In the process we are left with an imperfect understanding of the physical commodities markets and the governments rather inexplicably are staying focussed on financial side of commodities markets. The International Organisation of Securities Commission has now said in a report on ‘Commodities Futures Markets,’ prepared for G20 that the “relative imbalance in the degree of transparency between financial (commodities) markets versus physical markets – which are, ironically, by far, the most transparent markets –obscures analysis of the many complex inputs into commodity prices.”
The play in commodities financial markets cannot but be based on price movements and demand and supply at a particular point in the physical market. However, much to general dismay, tracking of information in the latter remains imperfect. The blame for this is to be laid largely at the door of concerned industries. Blas, therefore, ruefully says, “Industry lacks enthusiasm to improve statistical flow as companies see their intelligence as proprietary information, key to their trading.”
He further makes the point that some of the more than 25 international organisations tracking physical commodities markets are just “hopeless.” And why is there not a world organisation to collect and analyse prices and supply, of now, as volatile a commodity as iron ore, the principal ingredient of steel making? To give an idea of volatility of this mineral, its prices rose by nearly 50 per cent in the first five months of 2010. But as that squeezed the margins of steelmakers who could not pass on the incremental cost to the buyers of the metal, they started destocking iron ore already with them.
Driving down stocks is much in evidence in China, the world’s largest importer of iron ore. The result is, spot prices are falling. In the process, the Baltic Dry Index, which measures chartering rates of large and very large ships is also taking a hit. The world needs to have a better understanding of the physical market.
