COMMODITIES´ WARNINGS FOR STOCKS / BARRON´S MAGAZINE ( VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

Up and Down Wall Street


WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 26, 2011

Commodities' Warnings for Stocks

By RANDALL W. FORSYTH

Steep drop in metals, other markets suggests liquidity tide is turning.



Is the global tide of liquidity beginning to recede? The commodities markets, the first sector to be lifted by the tide, suggest it may be beginning to turn.


Just as financial news television programs this week have been filled with segments about spreading food inflation and how to play the commodity boom, prices of metals, energy and agricultural goods tumbled sharply as if on cue Tuesday.


As usual, ex post explanations were trotted out -- from news of a surprise contraction in the U.K. economy in the fourth quarter to a speculation of some hedge fund or other speculator scrambling to meet a margin call -- for the steep retreat Tuesday. That the decline followed a strong advance reaching back to last summer makes the decline understandable, even expected.


The key factor spurring that advance has been the expansionary monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, which effectively has been exported to other central banks.


But those central banks have begun to counter the liquidity that has flooded into their financial systems and pushed prices higher. The interest-rate increases and other tightening moves taken by India, China and other emerging economies now may be showing up in the commodities markets.


Overheating in those fast-growing economies and the resulting inflation could result in a "serious blow" to the global economy, the International Monetary Fund warned Tuesday. But the ink wasn't dry on the IMF's report before the commodities markets gave signs that tighter monetary policies abroad are beginning to bite.


No commodity is a better indicator than the one dubbed "Dr. Copper," so named because it's said to be the metal with a PhD in economics. The metal, which is used in a broad array of industrial and housing uses, soared more than 50% from last summer's lows. The big push got under way in earnest at the end of August, when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke began laying the rhetorical groundwork for QE2, the second phase of quantitative easing.


The $600 billion Treasury-securities purchase program, now about half done, is all but certain to be completed as planned by mid-year. The Federal Open Market Committee will release its policy directive Wednesday and will confirm that. The panel also may provide some hints on its thinking about what will happen once QE2 is completed at the end of June.


The federal-funds futures market began to price in an increase in the Fed's key rate target -- pegged at 0-0.25% since December 2008 -- by early 2012. Late last week, the probability of a fed-funds hike was 56% by next January and 90% by next February. That followed news of a China's gross domestic product exploding at a 9.8% annual rate in the fourth quarter, which seemed to portend further tightening moves by that nation's central bank.

Copper plunged 2% Tuesday, leading a broad swath of commodities lower. Yet this isn't just of interest of futures traders.


Richard Rhodes, of the eponymously named Rhodes Capital Management, shows in his daily missive the parallel moves of copper and the Standard & Poor's 500. Copper "is putting in a topping pattern," he writes. "Now, the S&P can't be far off."


The fed-funds futures market also took note Tuesday. Odds of a rate hike next January fell to less than even money (42%) while the probability of a rate hike in February fell by one-fifth, to 72%. Treasury yields backed off as well, helped by reports that President Obama would call for a freeze on discretionary, non-security spending.
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Finally, gold continued its retreat, falling to a three-month low at $1332.30 an ounce for the active February Comex contract, the precious metal is down almost exactly $100 from December's historic peak.

Moreover, Reuters reports the popular SPDR Gold Trust exchange-traded fund (ticker: GLD) saw its biggest one-day decline in volume, by 31.262 tons to an eight-month low of 1,229.581 tons, as of Jan. 25.
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All this circumstantial evidence points to the early signs that the effects of tighter monetary policy abroad are beginning to be felt. The odds of a Fed rate hike, even 12 months down the road, remain limited.
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But just as the stock and commodities market started rallying months before QE2 was officially launched in November, they may be looking ahead to the second half when the Fed no longer will be pumping $600 billion into the markets.
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