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To give perspective to people here, the movements in the commodities market before 2000 were very tepid but post the dot com bubble burst and the ensuing recess

• nosuchthing 11y ago
  Amazing how the stock market 'investor' language and mindset thinks of increases in costs of commodities as a positive thing.
  • pjlegato 11y ago
    If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. It is not the case that investors are simply greedy and want higher prices so they can make more money. Economies are not a zero-sum game where people can only make money when someone else loses it. Commodities are the basic inputs into other overall economic activity. Glossing over the details, if commodity prices are falling, it means that overall economic activity is faltering. It means fewer commodities are required because fewer higher order things are being produced with them. It means more people are out of work rather than building stuff. Conversely, high commodities prices means there are lots of people willing to buy them at high prices. This implies that lots of new stuff is being built -- otherwise, nobody would pay those high prices, and prices would fall. It means that lots of people are working productively and lots of new value is being created.
    • nosuchthing 11y ago
      Inexpensive commodities should be a universally positive goal. Scarcity is a plague we need to cure. Strains on supplies of commodities, driving prices upward only indicates supply scarcity, not necessarily related to widespread creation of material goods.
      • pjlegato 11y ago
        Getting rid of scarcity is great as a long term goal, but it's not happening any time soon. The technology does not exist yet to do so, which is why these things are still traded for money. This goal is unfortunately not relevant to commodity price movements on human time scales, and falling prices shouldn't be interpreted as evidence of scarcity no longer existing. Commodity prices don't fall because someone invented a great new way to get corn or oil without labor or fertilizer or land; they fall because of short-term supply and demand imbalances. Upward prices does not only indicate supply scarcity. It might indicate supply scarcity, or it might indicate increased demand. There are two sides to the market, and either can move the price. Prices are not "driven" upwards by some teleological entity that just wants higher prices; the action of people buying and selling finds a consensus equilibrium based on supply and demand. If one commodity price is going up, it might be the case that there's a supply shortage. If all are going up, it indicates broad based demand due to a healthy economy that requires more inputs. Broad supply scarcity rarely if ever extends beyond a few specific commodities. Oil might be scarce, but all commodities being scarce almost never happens. Commodities are widely produced in many diverse locations all around the world by groups with widely different goals. If the average price of all commodities is rising broadly, it's demand-driven, not supply constraint. Barring events like a world war, there will never be a massive simultaneous supply shortage in oil, wheat, corn, soybeans, cattle, hogs, gold, silver, and frozen orange juice. A broad price rise is thus generally a good thing since it means lots of people have jobs producing things and are making money to buy things that require these inputs.
    • deciplex 11y ago
      Expensive commodities can also just mean speculators are crowding out the legitimate market.