Commodity Prices Stuck in a Rut

Over the past few months, the price of crude oil, natural gas, gold, corn and other key commodities fell again and again, the largest decline following the 2008 commodity crash. However, frustratingly, it’s also difficult to improve in 2015.

Crude oil remains in the doldrums
Insiders agreed that the 2015 oil market would be stuck in a rut. Zhu Chunkai, a crude oil industry analyst, told a reporter from International Business Daily, until the first quarter of next year oil market would be still stuck in a rut.
Zhu Chunkai said that supply surplus would still be the biggest negative factor in the crude oil market. In the next three months, the oil price would be $60-80 without unexpected interference geopolitical crisis." Not only OPEC insisted to supply oil steadily, the US shale resources were also hitting the market.
Despite the massive US shale gas development, it was still difficult to replac oil in the short term. With the recovery and development of the global economy, demand would also increase. After all, as a non-renewable resource, and the source of a wide range of plastics and energy, oil is very important and its price would turn up sooner or later. "


Overall not optimistic
In fact, not only crude oil prices would continue to slump in 2015, but the overall commodity price trend was not to be optimistic.
The World Bank released the latest issue of "commodity market outlook," which pointed out that as copper and iron ore price fell sharply, metal price was expected to decrease by 5.5 percent in 2014, similar to 2013. In addition, because the United States expanded production capacity, fertilizer price was expected to fall by nearly 12 percent in 2014.
It pointed out that international food prices continued to decline and were expected to continue until 2015 since they reached its highest point in 2012. Among them Maize prices were expected to decline by 27% from 2013 $260 / ton to 2014 $190 / ton, while the price of rice and wheat also fell by 16% and 9%, respectively.
But it also pointed out, the price trend of rice, coffee and cocoa may be in opposite to most commodity price trend. Since some Asian suppliers harvest was deteriorated, rice prices were expected to rise; earlier this year, coffee prices soared, leading beverage index rising by 23% over last year, in the future, this situation was likely to continue; in addition, due to the supply of Côte d'Ivoire supply issues and cocoa-producing west Africa countries possibly affected by Ebola epidemic, cocoa prices were also expected to rise sharply. (www.chinainout.com)