Le materie prime: ennesima puntata - gz
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By: GZ on Lunedì 06 Gennaio 2003 16:27
Il dato a sorpresa del 2 gennaio di aumento improvviso degli ordini manifatturieri in america (ISM) che ha fatto rimbalzare le borse è stato una sorpresa per molti, ma non per chi osserva le materie prime salire ogni giorno da un anno.
Se le commodities salgono sempre da un anno a questa parte a un certo punto è ovvio che, dato che queste materie prime non vengono mangiate crude, ma vengono utilizzate nell'industria manifatturiera sia logico che ora si veda un aumento di ordini industriali.
Ma oltre all'implicazione per le borse in generale le materie prime sono anche il modo più diretto per guadagnare al momento.
Un modo per vedere cosa funziona come investimento è guardare chi sta guadagnando di più in questo momento
Ad es oggi su Forbes intervistano il gestore (donna, ma "gestrice" non suona bene) di un fondo hedge, Galtere International Fund, Ltd, che fa +60% da inizio 2001 (la media dei fondi hedge è circa +1% negli mesi) perchè sta puntando in prevalenza sulle commodities, non solo oro e petrolio che sono le più ovvie negli ultimi tempi, ma tutte le commodities.
I temi bollenti non solo solo l'oro e argento e il petrolio (che sono molto legati all'esito della tensione in iraq), ma tutte le materie prime perchè lo scenario è quello di ESPANSIONE DELLA LIQUIDITA' GLOBALE E QUESTI SOLDI in qualche modo SPINGONO A CONSUMARE E PRODURRE, non telecom o tecnologia o media che sono sature, ma altre cose e SOPRATTUTTO IN ASIA dove molte econonie crescono al 4% o più (Cina, Corea, Taiwan, Australia, Thailandia, Malesia...)
Leggere l'intervista a questa donna e lo scenario DI INFLAZIONE SULLE MATERIE PRIME che indica (specie quelle agricole e industriali)
Uno dei vantaggi di leggere questo sito (inteso come cobraf.com) è che uno dei pochi posti in cui trovate suggerimenti sulle materie prime (e in parte titoli collegati)
Per chi non ha voglia e tempo di leggere l'inglese il messaggio è :
compra fondi
o contratti future o opzioni
o titoli azionari
con dentro cereali, carne, allumininio, rame, carta e legno e ovviamente anche argento e oro
(il petrolio invece è sui massimi fatto salvo una puntata per la guerra)
-------------------- DA FORBES --------------------------
It has been a thoroughly depressing two decades for commodities speculators. After a burst of price gains in the 1970s, as inflation spun out of control, commodities turned cold. Gold has been a rotten investment for most of the time since 1980. Industrial commodities like copper and aluminum, and consumables like corn and pork bellies, have not done much better. Stocks and bonds were the place to be for the closing decades of the 20th century.
In the early 1980s investors stampeded into commodity trading funds. Now, this corner of Wall Street is so dead that the Standard & Poor's Commodity Index may not even have enough volume to stay alive. It garnered all of 1,000 or so trades Dec. 23, and there is talk it may soon be delisted. This in a year when the Commodity Research Bureau index rose 19%.
A good contrarian reacts to this development with the notion that now would be a great time to sink some money into commodities contracts. To make the case for gold and grains we turned to Renee Haugerud, operator of a smallish hedge fund in New York with a big commodities position, Galtere International Fund, Ltd.
Investors are plunging like lemmings into bonds and real estate at the moment. She says you should stay out of those rat holes: "There are lots of opportunities to make money right now, but they're not in the traditional asset classes."
Haugerud, 47, started her career in commodities as a trader at Cargill and has experienced depressed commodity prices for most of her adult life. Lately she has had a streak of luck: Her fund was up 60% in the first 11 months of 2002. We don't think you should put any money in a hedge fund like this one, which skims off 20% of gains plus an annual fee of 2% of assets. But you should listen to what Haugerud has to say about the shift in the marketplace. It could be that after a 22-year down cycle, commodities have turned the corner. If you agree, put 10% of your money in a hard-assets stock fund (see table) or in some commodity positions you place yourself at a broker.
Haugerud argues that the world economy is headed for a new era of boom-and-doom, with rising prices for unskilled labor, manufactured goods and certain commodities. She calls this "inverse stagflation" to contrast it with the stagflation of Jimmy Carter's presidency, which created a paradoxical double whammy of high inflation and falling employment.
Her thinking is that as the world's wealthy population ages, and U.S. baby boomers scramble to fund kids' educations and their own retirement, money will slosh around in search of decent returns--but stocks will fail them. Even after the market's stomach-turning descent, stocks remain pricey--the S&P 500 is between 30 and 50 times trailing earnings, depending on what definition of earnings you use. The same demographic trends, Haugerud avers, will keep low-end wages rising. Manufacturers are tapping out productivity gains and will push through price hikes. Prices for commodities as diverse as gold and grain likewise will have to rise because they are now barely high enough to cover production costs.
Haugerud has lived and breathed commodities since childhood. Her father, Neil, was a part-time farmer and the sheriff of rural Fillmore County, Minn. She remembers flying with him in his single-engine plane across the Iowa border to check out crops, even though he didn't own them. Why, she asked, did he care how someone else's fields were doing? "Money," Dad explained. "He told me there were things called futures markets where you can buy and sell things you don't own," Renee says. "The concept thrilled me, even though I didn't really understand it."
She went on to earn a forestry degree at the University of Montana in 1980. Returning to Minnesota, she pestered Cargill, the local giant in commodities trading, for a job, then traded agricultural commodities in the Midwest and ran a bond desk in Australia before making vice president of trading. Haugerud showed fearlessness and pluck. At a party she was dancing with her boss and noticed that he was no Fred Astaire. "You're obviously having a problem here," she told him, "so why don't you let me lead?"
Haugerud quit Cargill in 1994 to oversee trading businesses for a few other firms. She then set up Galtere in 1997 with the same business plan she had developed at Cargill. In 1999 she sold 49% to Capital Z, a New York investment firm, which pumped in $40 million for her to invest in her Global Macro fund. The fund beat the CSFB/Tremont GlobalMacro benchmark until last year, when it got clobbered by the terror attacks. A bet against the Swiss franc went awry when the currency benefited as a safe haven. Commodity positions got hurt by early expectations that global demand would dry up. Galtere ended 2001 down 17%
As the markets began to recover, the fast rebound in commodities was just what Haugerud's inverse-stagflation theory told her should happen: Attacks or no, people continued to eat food and wear gold. Commodities, she decided, were her trading forte. Haugerud decided to turn her fund, already heavily invested in commodities, into a commodity play. She gave back Capital Z its $40 million in tranches earlier this year and closed the Global Macro Fund in May. Down to her last million dollars in client capital, she fired her marketers and set up her headquarters in an apartment in New York's Flatiron district.
Recently she deployed half of her $12 million in client assets in commodities and commodity-based swaps, a quarter in currencies and the rest in bonds and equities. Corn is one of her favorites at the moment. Back in 1988, when the last drought caused a price spike, silos held 4.8 billion bushels, or six years' worth. Now they hold a mere 1.6 billion bushels, and Haugerud says nearly half will be drawn down to meet demand. Meanwhile, ethanol producers andLatin American livestock growers are buying ever more corn. Thus in late 2001 she bought corn futures for delivery the following July and December, paying $2.10 to $2.20 per bushel. She took profits in July and August, when prices hovered around $2.60.
Then she got right back in a month or so later for completely different reasons, buying December 2003 futures at up to $2.45 a bushel. This time Haugerud's interest was whetted by a source in Australia who said a drought there was forcing the country to buy U.S. sorghum as a replacement for feed. That, she figured, should boost prices for sorghum's upmarket cousin--corn--as well. Prices are still being weighed down by harvest-related selling, but Haugerud plans to wait it out by rolling over her contracts into later months.
She is likewise bullish on wheat and soybeans, though corn is more favorably priced, she says. Soybeans recently traded at $5.70 per bushel, while Haugerud says she will buy only up to $5.25. She takes a negative view on cattle and hogs because of growing supplies. One twist: pork bellies, which now cost 22 cents a pound more than lean hogs that sell at 64 cents a pound. She thinks that spread could widen further and cites an unscientific clue:Bacon entrées are popping up in restaurants, a sign that Americans' fear of fat may have been overtaken by their love of the meat.
Gold is also in for a good run, and not only as a hedge against plunging stock prices and war jitters, she says. Central banks from China to Canada are holding far less of their foreign reserves in gold bullion these days, which means they have less to sell into the market and thereby depress prices. Last year they collectively sold less gold than they had the year before, the first decline since 1992.
Market watchers expect 400 tons of central bank gold to come on the market next year, but Haugerud expects the total to be more like 350 tons. When supplies come up short, prices will rise, and gold will get a further boost from investment banks that have been selling it short lately and will be forced to buy it back, she says. She is less sanguine about copper, aluminum and other industrial commodities, whose prices went through the roof during 1970s stagflation. Sluggish global growth could hurt these products' prices for years to come.
"Picking the right investment is much like cutting cattle," Haugerud says, harking back to her father's early lessons down on the farm. Growing up, she and her sister had to herd 200 head of cattle as part of their chores. "It was work, but it was fun," she says. "You herd the winners into the corral and cut the rest away. It's precise, but with a good rider, it's not complicated."
Modificato da - gz on 1/6/2003 15:48:55
