What to watch in commodities in 2019: winners, losers — and a lot of pigs
From soya beans and swines to copper and crude, here’s a round-up of prospects and pitfalls for the year ahead
New York/Singapore — Commodities took a kicking in 2018 — with deep losses in everything from oil and copper to coffee and sugar — so what’s in store for the 12 months to come? The inaugural What to Watch of the year offers a selective run-through of prospects and pitfalls for some of the top raw materials, and it’s a reasonably positive picture that emerges. That roadmap comes ahead of a busy period. The US-China trade fight will be in the news next week, with a US delegation in Beijing for talks from Monday. In addition, there’ll be more pointers on the macroeconomic outlook, with the World Bank updating its Global Economic Prospects report on Tuesday and a speech from Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell on Thursday. Before that, Powell speaks in Atlanta later on Friday. Oil’s Well
The standout feature in commodity markets last quarter was crude’s swoon from a four-year high into a bear market. The drivers of the reversal were record US shale output, a clutch of sanctions wa...
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