| 作者 |
 Commodity "Bubble" Review, for 隔世兄及其他朋友 |
 |
| 所跟贴 |
Commodity "Bubble" Review, for 隔世兄及其他朋友 -- Theme - (1256 Byte) 2006-5-28 周日, 04:50 (1594 reads) |
恍如隔世
[博客]
[个人文集]
头衔: 海归少将
声望: 学员
性别: 
加入时间: 2004/10/04
文章: 971
海归分: 307339
|
|
|
作者：恍如隔世 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
For the convenience of discussion, here is Buffett's 'commodity bubble' comment.
----------------start of quote-------------------
Energy, oil, and metals have all seen terrific moves. Copper may have had the biggest. The start of most trends is driven by the fundamentals of supply and demand, but then speculation takes over. People have been watching the fundamentals of commodities for years. There’s an old saying, “What wise men do in the beginning, fools do in the end.” Any move that starts with fundamentals will sooner or later draw speculators, and eventually the speculators will dominate. Probably the best known example is the tulip craze of the 1600s.
Once a move starts, people get envious. My guess is that we’ve seen some speculative activity in the commodity area, and in housing, too. How far it will go—who knows? My guess is that a lot of the activity on both sides of the commodity market is speculative.
CM: To get a sense of how little we know about commodities, look at our operations in silver.
WB: Right. We bought early and sold early—otherwise it was perfect. We’re not good at figuring out how far booms will go. If we get the fundamentals right, we’ll make some money. Booms tend to get wildest at the end. People gather around the punch bowl and it gets later and later, and all the girls look prettier. But at midnight everything turns to pumpkins and mice again. But everyone plans to be out before midnight. The problem, as Adam Smith (Jerry Goodman), has pointed out, is that during the party, there are no clocks on the wall. We saw it with the Internet stocks. We saw it with the uranium stocks in the 1950s. There were no clocks on the wall.
------------------end of quote------------------------------
When Buffett said commodity is a bubble, he will be right, eventually. But after how long? If the current up trend in commodity continues for another 5 years and moves up 200% more, Buffett is still right. People will say he spot a bubble too early. In trading, being right and early is no better than being wrong. Either way could lose money.
No discussion can be carried on without proper definition of the basic terms. Let's first define what 'bubble' is. To me, a bubble is irrational price up-move that caused not by the fundamental supply and demand law, but by human emotion. I also want to emphasize that, a bubble should not last 5 or more years and when it bursts, it should draw down the price level for 50% or more. Otherwise it should not be called a bubble. A classic bubble in recent memory is 1999 Nasdaq.
不拉大侠said he wants to exclude gold, oil and agriculture for commodity discussion. That leaves only industrial metals, namely copper, aluminum, zinc, lead, platinum, palladium. Of all the above, copper is the single most widely used and important base metal. It's called the sole indicator of the world economy. So our discussion can be simplified into one narrow topic ---- is the current copper price a bubble? Or, let me rephrase it in order to make it clearer. Will copper price drop 50% or more from its early May top and stay down for 5 years, or will it resume its up trend and make new highs in the next 5-10 years? It is very important to specify the time frame in the investment world.
For the above mentioned question, I am leaning toward Jim Rogers and Theme大侠. That is, regardless how the world economy is doing, copper price is still in a secular bull market. It will end its correction and resume its up trend within 6 months. It will make new highs after new highs in the next 5-10 years. Exactly how high? I don't know. But the top is far far away from here.
Here is my reasoning. China consumes more than 30% of the world copper each year. It represents 90-95% of the world new demand. So on the demand side, it's all about China. On the supply side, it's static. Chile is running full capacity. It takes 5 or more years to bring a new mine on stream. So the supply can not be increased fast enough. Now the question is really coming down to this: will China continue to buy copper at this bleeding price level? My guess is, China has to.
Copper is used in wiring for electricity distribution. It's used in electronic conduction. The former is a domestic demand and the latter can be roughly regarded as exporting demand. For the past few years China added unimaginable electricity power capacity. But it is still lagging behind in electricity distribution network. When it comes to building a power grid, there is no getting around of copper. Plus, the current administration has made up their mind to 建设社会主义新农村. This will be one gigantic infrastructure boom never seen in human history. For the exporting side, electronic and equipment have become the No. 1 money making sector for China. As long as China remains the lowest cost manufacturer, it can always pass on the increased cost of raw material to the end consumers. So I don't see either of the copper demand being reduced in the next 5-10 years. And don't forget, China lacks copper. It has to import, unless it stops the current development trend.
Jim Rogers pointed out that during 1970s, the world economy was depressed for many years. Yet raw material price including copper still went up a great deal.
It is one thing to look at the world economy from a GDP angle. It is another thing to look at it from the real activity perspective. Regardless what the world GDP figure will be, 1.3 billion people from China plus 1 billion people from India will continue to improve their living standard day after day. That means raw material, lots of them.
One more point to add: if one thinks the current copper price is too high, Jim Rogers pointed out that , discounted for inflation, the current copper price is still 40-50% lower than its last all time high set in the 1980s. The key point here is that the world has too much greenback circulating around. This paper flood will find some place to go, and tangible asset is one sure place won't be missed.
作者：恍如隔世 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
上一次由恍如隔世于2006-5-30 周二, 08:10修改，总共修改了4次
| 相关主题 |
| [分享] 如同他们美丽的名字－－世界末日女朋友
|
春秋茶馆 |
2011-2-24 周四, 20:47 |
| [老中原创ZT贴图] "重庆与世界“刊出我英语角40多人照片
|
海归酒吧 |
2011-3-08 周二, 16:31 |
| [分享]【视频】"赢在21世纪"北美高层次人才创业大赛...
|
海归商务 |
2011-1-16 周日, 11:55 |
| [分享]"“赢在21世纪”北美高层次人才创业大赛
|
海归商务 |
2010-10-11 周一, 16:00 |
| [老中原创/情色] 昨天听隔壁房洗脚妹说: "老公是老公, 男朋...
|
海归酒吧 |
2006-9-29 周五, 15:36 |
| 提上来答谢各位阅读和评论"伊斯坦布儿的世俗生活"的朋友
|
海归风情 |
2006-7-26 周三, 20:45 |
| Jim Rogers's Remarks on China and Com...
|
海归论坛 |
2005-1-19 周三, 10:10 |
| 太穷了,口袋里连个星都没有了.赚点分吧.发一个朋友给的"事实的真...
|
海归酒吧 |
2011-9-22 周四, 11:20 |
| |
|
|
|
| 返回顶端 |
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
您不能在本论坛发表新主题, 不能回复主题, 不能编辑自己的文章, 不能删除自己的文章, 不能发表投票, 您 不可以 发表活动帖子在本论坛, 不能添加附件不能下载文件, |
|
|
