Go short gold, long nickel – Barclays – by Geoff Candy (Mineweb.com – December 19, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

The bank expects 2014 to be another tough year for commodities but sees good things to come from a move out of structural surplus.

GRONINGEN (MINEWEB) – 2014 is likely to be another difficult year for Commodities, writes Barclays, in a note out earlier this week. But, it expects base metals to out perform both oil and precious metals in the early parts of the year.

The main reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, on the base metals side, Barclays expects 2014 to mark the end of a period of structural surplus that has afflicted base metal markets to a greater or lesser degree since 2007/2008.

“Markets such as aluminium and lead are expected to move into deficit, while surpluses in nickel and zinc are likely to shrink dramatically. Even in copper, the one exception, where we expect supply to grow faster than demand, the surplus next year is likely to be very modest indeed,” the bank writes.

This, Barclays says is primarily a result of an acceleration in demand growth that is currently running at an annualised rate of around 8%, which it points out is double the level of the first quarter of 2013.

“Meanwhile, a combination of production cuts (aluminium and nickel), declining output from established mines (zinc) and a slowdown in investment (copper) means that supply growth has either already peaked or will do so at some point in 2014.”

And, while it warns that there remains a great deal of inventory overhang in many industrial markets and a great deal of volatility is expected, “For the first time in a several years, price risk could return consistently to the upside in base metals and start to be more appropriate for buying the dips rather than selling the rallies, as has been the case for most of 2013.”

On the precious metals side of things, fundamentals play a much smaller role curently, Barclays says, which is the second reason why it favours base metals.

According to the bank, the big shift taking place in gold has more to do with the ongoing deterioration of the macro-economic environment, than it does with the fundamentals of supply and demand.

For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en/mineweb-gold-news?oid=222361&sn=Detail