By Bryan Rich
October 12, 2017, 7:30 pm EST Invest Alongside Billionaires For $297/Qtr
For much of the summer, while the world has been obsessed with Trump tweets, we’ve talked about the sharp but under-acknowledged move in copper and the message it was sending about the global economy and China (the biggest consumer of commodities), specifically. As I’ve said, people should Stop Watching Trump And Start Watching Copper.
Why copper? It is often an early indicator of economic cycles. People love to say copper ‘has a Ph.D. in economics’ because it tends to top early at economic peaks and bottom early at economic troughs. And it tends to lead a bull market in broader commodities.
Well, copper bottomed on January 15. Fast forward to today; the most important industrial metal in the world is up 24% on the year and sniffing back toward three-year highs. While the world continues to focus on Washington drama, this continues to be the proverbial “bell” ringing to signal a pop in economic growth is coming, and a big run for commodities investors is ripe for the taking.
With that in mind, we’ve talked in recent days again about the research from the top minds in commodities investing, Leigh Goehring and Adam Rozencwajg (managers of the commodities funds, ticker GRHIX and GRHAX). We know they like oil. In fact they think we see triple-digit oil prices by early next year.
They love the commodities trade in general. They have one of the most compelling charts I’ve seen in my 20-year career, to support the view that there is a generational bull breaking lose in commodities.
Stocks minted billionaires in the 1980s. Currencies minted billionaires in the 1990s. Tech and housing (bust) minted billionaires in the early 2000s. Then it was equity activism (stocks). The next opportunity looks like commodities.
In this chart below you can see, as Goehring and Rozencwajg say, commodities are as cheap today as they have ever been. “Only in the depths of the Great Depression and at the end of the dying Bretton Woods Gold Exchange Standard did commodities reach this level of undervaluation relative to equities.”
With this, they say, for those that can block out the noise, “there is a proverbial fortune to be made if they invest today.”
Here’s an excerpt from their most recent investor letter on their work on the stocks to commodities valuation:
“When commodities are this cheap relative to stocks, the returns accruing to commodity investors have been spectacular. For example, had an investor bought the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (or something equivalent) in 1970, by 1974 he would have compounded his money at 50% per year. From 1970 to 1980 commodities compounded anually in price by 20%. If the same investor had bought commodities in 2000, he would have also compounded his money at 20% for the next ten years–especially attractive considering the broad stock market indicies returned nothing over the same period.”
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