To be honest, beyond some vague notion of Japanese reconstruction demand, I can’t find any real cause for it. With China clearly not done with tightening, QE2 about to cease, the ECB hiking rates, global growth past its prime and oil punching through $1.10 on Gaddafi’s scorched earth policy, we’re due for a whack.
All of these are macroeconomic markers, but the liquidity issue must feed into trading fundamentals somewhere. In my view it’s commodities.
First, let’s look at Chinese demand in copper and iron ore. The FT has an instructive piece:
Is Chinese copper demand faltering? For the hundreds of miners, smelters, fabricators, bankers and hedge fund managers gathered this week for the industry’s big annual conference in Santiago, that is a market-moving question.
After an impressive bull run that has taken copper to all-time highs of more than $10,000 a tonne, inventories of the red metal are piling up in Chinese warehouses.
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.