Commodities climb higher on Chinese stimulus and gold’s gains

This article was written by Jim Wiederhold, Commodity Indices Product Manager at Bloomberg.

Commodities received a late quarter jolt of life from Chinese stimulus measures enacted to boost its wavering economy. After rising in the first and second quarters of 2024, BCOM rose again in the third quarter despite hitting a low for the year in early August when the Yen carry trade unwound and the VIX spiked to the highest since the depths of the pandemic in 2020. Since the pandemic, expectations for a rebound in China were not met over the last few years but early price action indicated a broadly favorable market reaction to the news in China. The government announced cuts to key rates, liquidity support for stocks, and measures to encourage M&A. Over the last two decades, the Chinese economy has been the most important driver of commodities prices as they tend to be the biggest importer of many major commodities important to the global economy.

Gold made another new all-time high in September and BCOM rose 5% over the next two weeks. This jives with history; looking back to 1991 every time gold hit a new all-time high, broad commodities rose on average 3.5% a month later. Gold is the highest weight in BCOM, and it has been over the last three years, hitting the single commodity cap of 15% within the index. Gold prices could be a leading indicator for short term price moves in broad commodities benchmarks like BCOM but may also indicate a recession could be around the corner. Looking back again since 1991, BCOM rose over the next month and quarter after new all-time highs in gold but one year later, BCOM tended to move lower by 2% on average when a recession hit asset prices more broadly. This time could be different if the US FED proves it can manufacture the soft-landing scenario the market is hoping to see play out.

With three quarters in the books for 2024, the dispersion of sector performance is apparent where we see energy and grains underperforming while metals, softs, and livestock are performing well. In exhibit 2, most sectors continued the direction of price action seen in 2023 but industrial metals completely reversed to the upside so far in 2024. This sector is the most correlated to the Chinese economy and the apparent rise has led many market participants to ask if we saw a bottom in industrial metals prices at the start of this year.

Despite the very strong performance from precious metals, it is the softs commodities that are the standout sector over the last two years moving most recently on the back of coffee. Extreme weather has not been the case for the growing areas of the major grains, but the opposite is true for the softs which tend to be grown near the Equator. The major coffee growing areas around the world have been hit by heat and dry conditions particularly in Vietnam and Brazil. Brazil is the top supplier of Arabica coffee beans. The BCOM Coffee TR index is up a strongly brewed 56.2% YTD in 2024.

Dispersion in performance across the sectors can also be seen by the change in commodity weights over the course of 2024 from the original BCOM target weights implemented annually during the January roll period. As the underlying futures price of a commodity increases during a calendar year, the weight within BCOM changes with it allowing for increased relevance of a commodity reflected in BCOM and vice versa to the downside. As the price of gold rose higher throughout the year, the weight increased contributing to the overall performance of BCOM. This could give an additional boost to BCOM performance if gold price seasonality plays out. Over the last 20 years, gold prices tended to rise 2.64% in the fourth quarter and market participants will look for a continuation of the seasonal trend with the increased gold weight in BCOM.

Market participants look to commodities for diversification because they tend to be uncorrelated to other asset classes. As stretched equities valuations put some on edge, allocating a small portion to commodities could help diversify a portfolio and lead to less volatility and drawdowns. If China is successful in at least stopping the drop in economic growth, broad commodities could have a nice tailwind ahead.