Commodity Cycles

What you'll learn

• ✓Explain supercycles

Lessons

1. 🛢️
   The Shape Repeats

   Why commodities boom and bust on a schedule
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2. Slow Supply, Fast Demand

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3. The Canonical Pattern

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4. The 2020s Episode

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5. Cycle or Shift?

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Sources

All content is drawn from the sources below. We deliberately avoid unverified material.

• Super-cycles of commodity prices since the mid-nineteenth century
  Erten and Ocampo, DESA / BIS Working Paper · academic
  Foundational empirical paper on commodity supercycles. Used for the multi-decade wavelength and historical pattern of four cycles since the 1860s.
  https://www.un.org/esa/desa/papers/2012/wp110_2012.pdf
• World Energy Outlook (annual editions)
  International Energy Agency · institutional
  Source for upstream oil and gas capex trajectories, OECD coal demand decline, and energy demand scenarios.
  https://www.iea.org/topics/world-energy-outlook
• The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions and Critical Minerals Market Review
  International Energy Agency · institutional
  Used for copper and lithium supply lead times, supply gap projections, and 2020 to 2024 lithium price action.
  https://www.iea.org/topics/critical-minerals
• Bridging the copper supply gap
  McKinsey and Company · institutional
  Industry analysis used for greenfield copper project lead times (7 to 10 years), capex levels, and electrification-driven demand outlook.
  https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/metals-and-mining/our-insights
• Mineral Commodity Summaries (annual)
  United States Geological Survey · institutional
  Primary source for global production, reserves and consumption shares (including China's share of refined copper and iron ore demand).
  https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-commodity-summaries
• Statistical Review of World Energy
  BP / Energy Institute · data
  Long-run energy data series used for 1970s oil shocks, 2014 oil crash, and post-2020 oil and gas demand reconstruction.
  https://www.energyinst.org/statistical-review
• World Bank Commodity Markets Outlook (Pink Sheet)
  World Bank · institutional
  Long-run real commodity price series and event commentary used to anchor the 2003 to 2008 base metals boom and subsequent corrections.
  https://www.worldbank.org/en/research/commodity-markets
• Trading in NYMEX WTI Crude Oil Futures Contract on April 20, 2020 (Interim Staff Report)
  US Commodity Futures Trading Commission · institutional
  Official report on the negative WTI settlement, used for the -37.63 dollar figure and the Cushing storage constraint.
  https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8315-20
• The Excess Co-Movement of Commodity Prices
  Pindyck and Rotemberg, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management style references · academic
  Theoretical and empirical framing for why commodities co-move and how slow supply with volatile demand produces overshoots.
• Commodity research letters
  Goehring and Rozencwajg Associates · article
  Practitioner research used as a reference point for the structural commodity bull thesis layered on top of cyclical moves, especially in oil, copper and uranium.
  https://www.gorozen.com/research
• Slowbalisation and the new commodity macro environment
  Roach Capital / Stephen Roach commentary, 2020 · article
  Background on how slowing globalization and supply-chain reshoring shape the current commodity cycle's structural backdrop.