Once red-hot commodities prices are cooling as falls in wheat and soyabeans from record highs add to longer-running downdrafts across base and precious metals, some softs and freight prices.
Markets are calling into question the broad vista of greater global growth and demand that powered the Reuters/CRB index of 17 commodity futures to a 23-year peak in March. So despite oil prices soaring to 21-year highs, the overall index has fallen off, losing some four percent this month.
"From uncertainty over China's growth prospects and heightened geopolitical concerns to high oil prices and the looming arrival of tighter monetary policy, the near-term upside for the metals looks very limited from here," Martin Fewings, an analyst at Mitsui Bussan, said in a report on base metals prices.
Fewings said the sale of one commodity was behind falls in another. He attributed aluminium selling in Shanghai to the need to meet margin calls on falling soyabeans.
What had once stacked up as favourable cards - booming growth in China, a weak dollar, geopolitical concerns and short supplies from copper concentrate to wheat to platinum - are now lining up differently.
Wheat prices have been hit by broadly favourable crop and supply prospects on the global market, while soya prices have suffered from factors including expected slower demand in major importer China.
Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) soyabeans for July delivery have fallen 13 percent from a peak in May of $10.36 per bushel, while CBOT July wheat has come off 12 percent from its May peak of $4.16 per bushel. Commodity funds dumped long positions in CBOT soyabean futures on Monday and the selling spilled over into wheat prices before a rebound.
Cocoa futures in London and New York have fallen sharply to more than two-year lows as an abundant supply of the product, particularly from number one producer Ivory Coast, continued to cast a bearish backdrop in the market.
Coffee prices have more than doubled from historical lows hit in an oversupplied market in 2002 but funds dismantled a large long position over the past few weeks and the market hit a five-month continuation low on Tuesday, with dim prospects of sharp recoveries in the mid term. Funds are taking note of the downturn.
Some two years ago, their fresh look at the sidelined asset class lent speed to a spectacular bull-run from timber to copper. Banks beefed up their presence in the sector and talked of billions of dollars in fund money and private wealth flooding in. Exploration fever seized miners eager to cash in on higher prices, while gold miners jettisoned hedges.
The practice of hedging or selling future production at a fixed price in the future had been seen as setting a ceiling on the price of gold.
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