Recently I’ve been working on a series looking at the question of whether the idea of the long term commodities bull market is still valid in light of the present market meltdown.
I’ve noticed a small scale phenomenon that I don’t have evidence enough to support in any sort of scientific way, but that seems to be a trend among my sources:
The doomsayers and “commodities are dead” folks are very happy to talk and easy to get a hold of. Calls are returned with lightning speed. The proponents of the long term commodities bull market theory – and there were many of these a year ago – are suddenly a little hard to get in touch with. They can be crabby. Or unavailable.
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That leaves me with an earful of gloom, and little cheery chirping about the future. However, in this week’s issue I have a story with Jim Rogers, the most famous of the commodity bulls, who is still willing to share his optimism about long term commodity prices. He began as a contrarian in the late 1990s when almost no one believed commodities were a good investment, became the source of a new orthodoxy among many market gurus who agreed with his views in the 00s, and now is back in the position of being a contrarian, as predictions of strong commodity prices have evaporated from most analysts’ reports.
If this commodity price slide turns around some time in the next couple of years and we get a big rebound Rogers won’t have changed his tune a note. But until then he’s a back in comfortable territory: mostly alone and independent-minded.
