Risk Management in Commodity Markets: From Shipping to Agriculturals and Energy

Preface

There has been lately a gigantic interest worldwide in the commodities space, energy in particular, as evidenced by the number of press editorials that are published on the subject. Commodity prices have been experiencing an unprecedented rise in the last few years and there is no sign, at the date of writing (July 2008), that we may revert to the levels of 2005 or 2006, not to mention those prevailing in the early 2000s which seem to belong to prehistory. Uranium prices went from $7 per pound in 2003 to $90, then $100 in early 2008, with 442 nuclear reactors in the world needing 180 million pounds of uranium, a number that is much larger than the current production. The LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) market is boiling at minus 160 Celsius degrees; Korean shipyards are delivering new carriers with increased capacity and, interestingly, some of the LNG tankers start being used as floating storage (hence, embedding a valuable optionality). Demand for metals, energy and cereals from Brazil and Russia, two of the fastest-growing economies, is undoubtedly pushing prices up, together with the one coming from the heavily populated India and China. As an example, between 2001 and 2005, China's demand for copper, aluminium and iron respectively increased by 78%, 85% and 92%. As part of the expansion of the commodities universe, azuki beans, which used to be ignored in many parts of the world, are now a component of a number of commodity indexes into which gigantic amounts of money have ...