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Commodities are an interesting asset class right now for a number of reasons. Commodity investing is a good way to play both offense (global economic recovery) and defense (a hedge for your portfolio against rising future inflation and a falling dollar). They are also a great portfolio diversifier which can reduce the overall risk (volatility) of your portfolio.

Playing Offense: The global economic rebound is coming, and commodities will benefit.
Most of the economies in the world are currently in severe recessions or have significantly lower economic growth than 2 years ago. There are now many signs that the US economy and many other economies have bottomed out and are starting to show signs of life again. US economic growth has improved from a -6% rate over the winter to a -1% rate in the second quarter of 2009 and it will likely show positive economic growth in the second half of 2009. As the economies around the world go from serious recessions to positive economic growth over the next 2 years the demand for commodities will increase and their prices will go up. This global economic growth is likely to be led by China and many other emerging countries which tend to be commodity-based or commodity-heavy economies. Continue reading ‘Investing in Commodities’ »

The chorus singing of the need to separate commodities from broader views of market movement appears to be growing again. It’s possible to separate this into “supply constraint” and “Asia rising camps”, but in general it is recognized that both come into play. Supply constraint singers realize that the mineral commodities sector was under capitalized for a long period beginning about 1980. Asia rising tunes increasingly look back to the last decade to recognize that mineral prices were already tied to Asian growth in the 1990s. Our contention that a “decoupling” of metal prices from western markets has taken place stems from Asian growth, while our expectation of continued historically high prices is based on supply constraint. The two need to be weighed against a second post-Crunch decoupling to gauge timing.

Germany, France and Japan all recorded small but positive economic growth in Q2. Canadian housing sales in July were the highest ever recorded. While we do view these stats as part of a post-Crunch bounce partly related to government generated stimuli, the early awakeners are hardly random. Germany and Japan have high personal savings rates. France and Canada (especially the latter) have banking systems that were largely unscathed by the Debt Crunch. A large portion of the Canadian housing turn-over is first time buyers who had been scared away from the market but now feel they should take advantage of low interest rates. These are the industrialized economies that are best placed to recover from the impacts of a credit squeeze because they have cash or available credit, though Japan and Germany need to work on domestic consumption. Continue reading ‘Lending Reversals, East and West’ »

To get an appreciation of how important commodities are to our daily lives, all you need do is take an inventory of all the products you use everyday made from commodities. You can start your list with the computer you’re reading this article on. Not only is it made of several commodities but in order to power it up and bring information to you over the internet needs commodities.

Look around your home at all the various devices made from or that work due to commodities and your list continues to grow. Not only do they make devices run, they also make us run as the foods we eat are commodities. Much of our day is spent at work and regardless of where you work practically everything you do requires commodities.

Continue reading ‘Commodities – An Important Part of Our Lives and an Attractive Investment’ »

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A mutual fund is a way to collect money from different source as a means of investment, this money is then further invested in different types of securities namely bonds, stocks, mutual funds, precious metals, commodities, market instruments etc.

Mutual funds are normally channelized into shared and these could be bought the same way as stocks, which allow mutual funds to have liquidity. Mutual funds are a perfect means of investment especially for small investors since the money is diversified into different and huge amount of investments. The investors have a share in the profits gained; these funds could even be sold to the company on any day at the net value price. The mutual funds can or cannot have free, however those funds that have a load normally provide advice from an expert, this might also help the investor while choosing mutual funds.

Following are some definitions with regard to Mutual Funds

1) An open-ended mutual fund: This is the kind of fund that is sold and bought by the fund. Here an investor normally invests by sending a cheque to the company after which the net asset value is calculated during the end of that business day, the investor is then credited with that amount of shares. When the investor wishes to sell the shares, the company then redeems these shares and hence the amount is again calculated based on the net asset value. Continue reading ‘What Is A Mutual Fund?’ »

Whenever Wall Street comes up with a new product it behooves Main Street to be skeptical about the hype. In this article we are going to look under the hood of the latest product to get the UK financial services market in a tizz: the multi-asset fund. Whilst there is nothing new in having a balanced fund of bonds and equities, there are more and more funds being launched that offer access to a broader range of asset classes, including: private equity, commodities, bonds, equities property, and hedge funds. What is also new about these products is the low cost structures that they are being offered in.

Low cost structures have become a reality as the result of consumer demand. After years of being hammered by large fees these have finally come under the microscope as fund values have plummeted. It seems a bit rich to pay someone 3% per annum to manage the dramatic decline of your assets. The advent of Exchange Traded Funds and Exchange Traded Notes are the other driver behind multi-asset funds. Now fund managers can use these listed tools to access a broad range of asset classes. Indeed the Gold ETF is though to have boosted the price in gold as it was formerly quite tricky to invest in without purchasing the physical product. Continue reading ‘Multi Asset Funds – Are They Any Good?’ »