So, BHP has announced a profit of epic proportions. The Age sets the scene nicely: BHP Billiton has vaulted into the ranks of the world’s top 10 earning companies – and sparked fresh debate over how much tax Australia should collect from its booming mining sector – after the resources giant posted a staggering $A22.46

Sorry we missed this one on Friday. RBA reports commodities are still heading for the moon Preliminary estimates for June indicate that the index rose by 1.3 per cent (on a monthly average basis) in SDR terms, after rising by 3.7 per cent in May (revised). The largest contributors to the rise in June were

The ABARE quarterly update of commodity prices for the year ahead is out today. First, the key macroeconomic assumptions:   God knows, it’s no easy job putting that lot together but let’s unpack a couple of assumptions. US growth projected at 2.9%, hmmm…well, maybe. The first quarter of this year was 1.8% and the economy

In its recent Bulletin, the RBA has a new piece of research that questions the role of financialisation in commodity prices. The research has some spectacular charts and ultimately concludes that new financial instruments “short-run price dynamics for some commodities, the level and volatility of commodity prices appear to be primarily determined by fundamental factors.”

So, last night oil got thumped, down 2%. Given the fall, and the prospect for further weakness, I thought it might be useful to ask, where oil might head to and what the implications are for this price trajectory. The stakes could not be higher. There’s an opinion at large that the current slowdown in

I won’t lie, the iron ore price has been making a goose of me for almost two years. At various points my forecast for big falls has almost been right but in total I have been clearly wrong. My prediction has been frustrated by tear away fixed asset investment in China, new market dynamics and

Missed this one yesterday. From the RBA’s Index of Commodity Prices: Preliminary estimates for May indicate that the index rose by 2.3 per cent (on a monthly average basis) in SDR terms, after rising by 7.3 per cent in April (revised). The largest contributors to the rise in May were increases in the estimated export prices of

Silver is not probably one of the metals you watch. While we hear about the price of gold all the time Silver is in many ways the poor cousin. But if there was ever going to be a useable metallic standard it would probably be silver rather than gold. This fact has been picked up

The RBA has released its monthly commodity index and its up substantially again. Even with the dollar, there is another 3.8 rise for April. Preliminary estimates for April indicate that the index rose by 7.6 per cent (on a monthly average basis) in SDR terms, after rising by 0.8 per cent in March (revised). The

There’s something wrong with this rally. 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,

Some days rent-seeking is a challenging business. Take Tom Albanese, CEO of Rio Tinto, who today held forth on the evils of government intervention in mining. According to Reuters: Besides, technical constraints, we are also seeing human constraints. We are seeing a combination of resource nationalism in some cases,” he said, citing “difficult governance” in

But should be congratulated for staking out a position, a rare event in today’s world of commentary flip flopping. As Deus Forex Machina likes to say, disagreement makes a market so let’s rip in. Gotti asks: Why should oil prices rise in response to the latest turn of events in Libya? We are already seeing

Clearly ABARE does not heed RBA maverick, Warwick McKibbin. In its latest report , the national commodity tracker offers forecasts for the next four years of Australian commodity exports: Uninterrupted growth. And if we look at the economic assumptions underpinning this bonanza, we find a nice illustration of just how seamless it will be: The

The oil price may be about to soar, at the very least the events in the Middle East will have some effect. A Macquarie Equities report notes that worries about oil and gas transition through Egypt has turned into more concrete disruptions of supplies from Libya, which exports one third of the world’s spare capacity. The period of low oil

BHP has reported its much anticipated mega profit, showing just how much better it is to be leveraged into the developing world than the developed world. The market predictably sold off on the news. As for what happens next, most brokers are bullish: Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland all had buys. Morgan

From today’s AFR: The Gillard government’s revised mining tax will collect $60 billion less over 10 years that the resrouce super profits tax, raising questions about whether it can fund higher superannuation tax concessions and infrastructure spending. New figures released under the freedom of information (FOI) laws reveal that the mineral resource rent tax will

As this blogger keeps saying, not all markets are created equal. In strategic commodity markets, where governments are big players, the dynamics are not as simple as the balance of supply and demand determining equilibrium. In strategic commodities, when prices go up, demand does not fall. Rather, it increases as governments panic about security of

Take a photo. This blogger agrees with Ralph Norris. The Rio Tinto result screams of the need for a resource rent tax. From The Oz: RIO Tinto has almost tripled its full-year net profit to a record $US14.32 billion ($14.25bn) after iron ore and copper prices surged last year, enabling the big miner to commit

A few days ago, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman declared again that there is no ‘financialisation’ element to the current commodity price surge. He began: I’ve been getting a fair bit of correspondence insisting that political unrest, in the Arab world and elsewhere, is being caused by … Ben Bernanke. You see, quantitative easing is responsible for

This blogger has looked on in astonishment as the iron ore price has moonshot through a sequence of cup and handle formations to an all time high. There are a variety of reasons behind the rise, not the least being the blow-off in Chinese growth. However, a number of variables are now in play that

Yesterday Bloomberg published an interesting article on Rio’s iron ore output: Production climbed to 50.1 million metric tons in the three months from 47.2 million tons in the same period a year earlier, according to a statement today from London-based Rio, the second-biggest exporter of the commodity. The figure beat a UBS AG estimate of