Monday, June 1, 2015

Commodity Price Moves During Previous El Niños

I almost hate posting this but as long as you know this is a simplistic, n=9, shake well before using, your mileage may vary type of quantitative approach then we're good.
From S & P Indices Indexology blog:
The Hottest El Niño Yet Catastrophic weather events are happening now as we are experiencing deadly heat in India, floods in Houston, Oklahoma and Mexico, and the drought in California. The ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation): Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions report prepared by the Climate Prediction Center / NCEP of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) stated on May 26, 2015 that El Niño conditions are present and there is an approximately 90% chance that El Niño conditions will continue through Northern Hemisphere summer 2015, and a greater than 80% chance it will last through 2015.

In some cases as in California where the El Niño may bring much wanted rain, the elevated ocean temperatures are welcome. However, the consistency in temperature increases hasn’t been enough to shift growing seasons, so is more destructive to crops in general than helpful and may disrupt the global food market.

In a post last year, spikes in agriculture following El Niño periods were shown to be significant. Now the study has been expanded to measure all of the five sectors 12 months performance post the El Niño periods. The result is that the global food market is not the only market that may get disrupted. Notice on average that all sectors have positive returns in the 12 months following the El Niño periods....MORE