Currently, commodities continue to show low correlation to stocks and bonds, so fundamentals driven by supply and demand will contribute to commodity swings.
For instance, the recent uptick in soft commodities prices may be attributed to El Nino forecasts. Mark Smulders, a senior economist and Food & Agriculture Organization representative, said the moderate-to-severe weather pattern will likely hurt world grain production, Bloomberg reports. Specifically, Smulders projected a 1.4% decline in Wheat output for 2015-2016.
“There might be quite an impact on production and it may last until the end of the year,” Smulders said.
Consequently, many soft commodities and grains-related exchange traded products have been rebounding. For instance, over the past week, the PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund (NYSEArca: DBA) rose 1.7% and iPath Dow Jones UBS Agriculture Sub-Index ETN (NYSEArca: JJA) jumped 3.5%. Additionally, the Teucrium Corn Fund (NYSEArca: CORN) was 2.4% higher, Teucrium Soybean Fund (NYSEArca: SOYB) was up 0.7% and Teucrium Wheat Fund (NYSEArca: WEAT) advanced 3.6%. [Soft Commodity ETFs Could Rebound on El Niño Weather]
For more information on the commodities space, visit our commodity ETFs category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.