Happy Days

fire in the middle of the city during night time

Our resolve can wear down a lot after a couple of months of being hammered in the market. Choppy action for months can be harder than a steady grind down. You get your hopes up that the sector is decoupling from the general market just to get the rug pulled out from under you.

It is hard to see that equity prices go towards, or below, prices the equities were at a year ago. Getting closer, or below, your entry price is even worse. When you are up by a lot you are playing with the house money. It does not give that much consolation that commodity stocks are performing a lot better than the overvalued tech stocks or the other overvalued sectors. The only thing that matters is that we do not lose money. If you give it all back, you get angry at yourself that you did not take some of it off the table.

Still, keeping things in perspective is very important. Yes, a recession, or a several year long depression is a possibility. In that case a lot of wealth will be wiped out in the world, but we will still need food and energy to survive. I do not believe that uranium and other essential commodities will fall as much as many of the speculative options out there. (We do however see the uranium sector has outsized beta to the up- and downside again and again). If they do, I believe they will bounce quicker. Why? Because they are essential for our way of living. Most of the speculative cryptocurrencies and tech companies (with unproven business models) can not proclaim the same place in the Maslow hierarchy. Well funded companies with great management in a sector essential for the world energy supply will survive. Compared to other investments many commodities have few to no substitutes, and many of them also have very inelastic price demand. Demand can go down a certain amount during a recession, but if the commodity already is in a major supply deficit, there is a bigger margin of safety compared to other investments. You still have to pick the right companies. (Picking the wrong one, who has to do a capital raise at the worst possible time, can be the difference between bad and spectacular returns).

With hindsight on the last couple of years, I would maybe have been a little less aggressive and been more patient with putting on my positions. Lobo Tiggre, the Independent Speculator, is someone I want to emulate more. The markets have time and again given us great buying opportunities. I am however not changing my overall strategy. As with diets or fitness programs, the best strategy is the one you are able to follow. What helps a lot for me is having a job with a cash flow coming in every month. I have diversified some of my new funds into the oil sector, but I am still buying uranium. If we continue lower, I will have some money ready to take advantage of it.

Getting on the offensive

One of my older posts “The Big Commodity Short” has been shared this week. I think that most of it is still on point. If I could have made one change for my own part, I might have invested more in the oil and gas sector that has been on a tear the last year. Still, I think that I also may have dodged a bullet. The cheapest and most undervalued oil and gas equities were in Russia. When I wrote this piece we knew that rising commodity prices would lead to higher prices on other products. That this again would put pressure on the central bank banks to curb runaway prices was a given.The question is still if the central banks will continue to increase rates and cause a major recession.

One should not be in the situation where you doubt the thesis every time the market is going down. The markets do not move up or down in a straight line. I see proof almost every week that the thesis is unfolding:

On Thursday June 16th Borja (@piterloskot82) reported that CGN (China General Nuclear) and CGNPC (China General Nuclear Power Corporation) have entered into a new sales framework agreement for three years between 2023 and 2025 for 3.12 million pounds per year. The interesting part was that 40% of the contract was fixed at $61.78/lb multiplied by an inflation multiplier, but the majority (60%) of the contract was linked to the spot price:

I have two takeaways from this contract: The first one is that the fixed part of the contract is way higher than the spot price at the moment ($61.78/lb versus $46.98/lb). The second part is that CGN has the majority of the contract linked to the spot price at the future delivery date. CGN would not have 60% linked to the spot price if they did not think it would be a lot higher than $61.78 during the contract period 2023-2025.

We also got the news that Global Atomic has received a Letter of Intent from a major North American utility to produce 2.1 million pounds of uranium from 2025 to 2030. Utilities are looking for pounds outside the major producers with developers to diversify supply. (Previously we have seen companies like Encore Energy contracting pounds for delivery in 2023). We did not see a lot of this before 2021. Focusing on just the general markets and the spot price of uranium going down (while SPUT is getting stink bids filled) becomes very myopic with this backdrop.

The challenge now is to get on the offensive. When looking back at the time we are now five years in the future, what do you think will be the best decision you can make today? Do you believe this is a buying opportunity or should we abandon ship and wait for better times? I am looking for more cash to deploy more steadily, but I will try to be a bit patient the next couple of months.

Why do I still own gold and silver?

white and gray bird on the bag of brown and black pig swimming on the beach during daytime

The majority of my articles are about uranium. My second biggest position is, even if I do not write a lot about it, in physical precious metals and the miners. Owning precious metals after August 2020 has been frustrating to say the least. Why do I still hold these positions when they are underperforming?

To defend an allocation to the physical gold and silver positions, we have to understand that all investments are not for maximizing the upside. Our allocation to physical should be considered more of an insurance. Something you only want for protection against a negative event like a currency devaluation. (The situation in Venezuela comes to mind). Investments in the miners are more for speculation and participating in the upside.

Inflation protection

Many people own precious metals as a hedge against inflation. In that environment, veteran investors will be quick to tell you that investments in energy and other commodities perform even better than precious metals. (A good reason to hold uranium, oil and other commodities).

The other benefit you get by owning precious metals is for diversification, and that it still performs in a deflationary environment. Let us compare the S&P 500 to the performance of gold during the financial crisis of 2008.

Gold during the 2008 Financial Crisis

During the 2008 financial crisis the stock market fell by more than 50% after the housing bubble popped.

From the top og $1549 in October 2007 it took about 16 months before the S&P 500 bottomed out at $735 in February 2009, down 52,5% from the 2007 top. From there, it would take another 49 months before the S&P 500 got back to break even in March 2013. In total, the S&P 500 spent more than 5 years underwater before it managed to get back above its 2007 highs.

The price of gold during the same time told a completely different story. From the S&P 500 top in October 2007, to the bottom in February 2007, gold went up 27%. By the time the S&P 500 was back at break even in March 2013, gold had gone up by more than 120%.

This is not an example to show how much you could have made if you rode the gold bull market perfectly. This is how part of your portfolio could have performed (not inflation adjusted) during the time of the financial crisis if you were diversified into physical gold. Owning an asset that protects you like this can make a big difference if you want to protect your wealth.

Caveat – Gold stocks are still stocks

It is important to emphasize that physical gold performed well as a hedge, not gold mining stocks. The gold stocks performed very similarly to the general stock market, they just fell even more. (On the positive side, they bottomed out and got back to break even earlier than the general market). Gold stocks were not a good hedge during the financial crisis.

What I am doing

Markets do not move when we want them to. I have a position in physical gold and silver for protection, and in the miners for upside. (I look to add to this, and to my cash position in 2022). Many talk about scaling out of some of their commodity positions, and into gold and silver miners later. I do not know if the market will be there for them when that time comes. I therefore have some exposure to gold and silver at all times.

My portfolio is a mix of physical and Sprott’s gold or silver trusts. In addition I own some miners. For miners the big ETFs are where most of the funds have gone. I also have some select companies who have jockeys with a track record for making money for their shareholders. (Rick Rule has mentioned some of these jockeys in earlier interviews). Like everything else, you can get these companies at reasonable valuations if you buy them during weakness in the market.

Silver: Do we want to have a free market or do we want shortages?

I am back with my tinfoil hat to write a bit more on the silver market. Doombergs recent article on the copper and oil markets have put things into a bigger perspective for me. In addition I have relied on the work of Nate Fisher and Ronan Manly on the silver market.

Oil

I will start with referencing Doombergs 25. October 2021 article “Doctor Copper Is Sick“ where they started with explaining what happened in April 2020 when the oil price traded negative $37.63 a barrel:

«The front-month May 2020 West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for delivery in Cushing, Oklahoma is the contract that traded negative and – critically – the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) allowed it to happen.»

«Whatever you might think about the CME’s decision, few doubt the sanctity of that market now. Participants understood the rules, the rules didn’t change, a clearing price was found, and life went on. Production of oil was curtailed, creative storage solutions were implemented, prices recovered, and excess inventory was worked off in an orderly fashion as the economy rebounded.»
Doomberg

In this case long traders were punished because they did not have a place to take delivery of the oil they had purchased. For anyone who believes in capitalism, this is how you do it. You do not interfere with the price or change the rules. Price is the market clearing mechanism. Everyone in the market knows the rules already, and you do not change them when some of the participants are in trouble. The market was allowed to find a market clearing price at negative $37.63 a barrel, and this was reached without outside interference.

Copper

On the The London Metal Exchange (LME) however, the price was not allowed to find a clearing price in the copper market:

«somebody was caught naked short and could not make delivery. They collected money from another trader at some point in the past on the promise that they would have copper to give them, but when the time came, they couldn’t make good on their contractual obligations.»
Doomberg

Market participants have to know the rules in the market they operate in. If a naked short sees the price of copper goes up, they have to run around to sellers of physical copper to buy from them. If they can’t find anyone to sell them copper, they can’t deliver on their obligations. (To use GameStop as an example: the short sellers were forced to buy back the shares they were short at prices way above what they had already sold). Those are the rules, and they have not changed. This led the copper price at the short end of the curve to go vertical.

LME interfered and allowed participants with short positions to avoid delivery. The rules were changed. People who have followed the commodities markets have expected copper going up with increased demand, and have taken long positions in anticipation of this. (As we saw in the oil market, being long is not without its risks). Interference to protect short sellers does damage to the market. Inventories of copper were low because supply could not keep up with demand. Increased demand for a product is not manipulation.

«the LME damaged its credibility in the marketplace. It either facilitates price discovery and thereby serves a useful purpose, or it doesn’t. Apparently, it doesn’t.»
Doomberg

The positive take away from the oil and copper market is at least that it is communicated to the market. Many find it is a lot worse in the silver market.

Silver

Moving on to silver I will follow the example of Nate Fisher and make the disclaimer that everything I write about the silver market are allegations only.

I am using the articles “The Great Silver Conspiracy – should we have hit $50 silver in February? Yup.” by Nate Fisher and “LBMA misleads Silver Market with False Claims about Record Silver Stocks” by Ronan Manly as my reference.

They are very thorough articles so I hope you will read them for reference. I am doing the cliff notes version here:

Starting at $24.85 on 28. January, the price of silver spiked up. Silver was going into the weekend 30. and 31. January at about $27.00. Over the weekend there were massive retail raids of physical silver all over the world, and several sellers sold out their inventory. This had the effect that retail sellers would have to source new inventory. Into Monday 1. February the price of silver went up even more, and hit $30 before ending the day at about $29. A massive move in a short amount of time. The next day on 2. February the paper price on silver was smashed down over $3.50. – This was at a time where there was massive physical interest with retail silver selling out, and money was pouring into vehicles like the SLV and PSLV.

The reason for people buying SLV and PSLV was simple:

(this) “led many of us to buy SLV or SLV call options expecting the float in the LBMA warehouses to be exhausted and force SLV to go to the open spot market to buy silver at increasing prices. Potentially hundreds of millions of ounces would need to be sourced, and it led investors to believe that the price of SLV would thus go sky high.“

“Now, with SLV, investors at the time were led to believe that if they bought shares in SLV, that SLV would then add the appropriate ounces to the trust.“
Nate Fisher

Over a three trading days period between 29. February and 3. February SLV claimed to have sourced a massive 118 Moz, and barely moved the paper prize of silver in the process. (With a yearly consumption of 1,000 Moz, a three day shock of more than 10% of this is huge). People who did not believe this were asked to take off our tinfoil hats.

“However, it appears that somewhere around February 1st, SLV changed their prospectus to suggest that “not all of the silver is there.”
Nate Fisher

What a coincidence. A fund that at one time had in their prospectus that they had fully allocated to silver, suddenly changed to say it might not be all there.

Later, in April when they closed the books for March, someone found a 110 Moz accounting error in “one of the LBMA vaults”. (Tinfoil hat back on).

«In short, instead of silver holdings in LBMA vaults having risen by 3,863 tonnes (or 11%) in March, the new LBMA claim is that the silver inventories rose by 561 tonnes (or 1.6%). Which is 6.88 times less.
Instead of a 124.2 million oz increase, the increase was 18 million, a difference of a massive 106.1 million ozs. Instead of record silver holdings in London, there was no record. Therefore, the folks at the Guinness Book of Records are not needed. The record still belongs to March 2020, when 1.175 million ozs of silver was claimed by the LBMA to be stored in London.»
Ronan Manly

There are a lot more factors in play here, but I suggest you read the two articles I have linked on the subject. In short what happened was the following:

SLV misled investors to think they had added 118 Moz of silver, and they did not. (If they had gone out into the spot market to buy these 118 Moz, the silver price would have moved significantly, and sharply higher. In turn, this much higher price would have attracted even more buyers and speculators – driving the price even higher. Silver and many commodities act like a Giffen good: A good that people consume more of as the price rises). Furthermore, SLV changed their prospectus during this time, before they months later discovered the accounting error.

I can attest to, as a person who works in accounting, and has reporting every month, that in even smaller companies you will have some quality control over what you report. If there is a big change month over month in a reported number, it will always be investigated, verified and commented on. «I see we have a 10% increase in inventory this month. What is the reason for this?» Is something that will be asked in situations like this. Especially if holding bullion is your main business. The responsible for purchasing and logistics then have to confirm it. People make the entries, and we always have to double check for human error.

The only thing I am unsure of in this case is what price we could have seen in February. Could it have hit $50? One can never know how things would have played out without interference. I am sure that when price was not allowed to spike up, and find willing sellers, we have just kicked the can down the road. The market has not been given price signals to increase production, and companies like First Majestic are holding back part of their production. People around the world are seeing rising prices. Those who have read up on history are buying real assets, cryptocurrencies, commodities and precious metals. I am sure we will see situations later where we will have a similar run on silver, and there will not be enough to go around. The playing card with “accounting error” will not be possible to use again. Silver investors have also learned not to use vehicles like SLV, and will only buy physical or use PSLV that actually stack silver for their customers.

Zero to one

faceless man with decorative shoe playing table game

I made my first substantial money investing in tech. Books like «Zero to One» is a book that was referenced a lot for investing in the tech sector and I really respect Peter Thiel as a thinker. I have found this book can also be applied to commodity investing. One can take knowledge from one place and try it in other sectors.

From my experience the biggest change in valuation a company can have is going from the impossible to the possible. A company that is able to get into production, come successfully out of a restructuring, or strikes gold are events I would put in this category. Things that are already seen as possible for a company will already have a lot of this priced in. Unanswered questions, or impossible situations are not priced in, and people do not know what it is worth.

In Zero to One there are three ways of approaching this:

1. Bet on a contrarian truth

What important truth do very few people agree with you on? Here you have to take a step outside the mainstream consensus. Some examples I have for this in the commodity sector are:

Renewables like solar and wind can’t save the environment alone. We need reliable baseload power. The solution for this is in many cases nuclear.
The electronics industry is experiencing a chip shortage because of increased electronics demand. The tin shortage is the bigger factor, and not production capabilities in the factories that the mainstream media portrays it as.

By betting contrarian here in smaller sectors, one avoids competing one will experience in bigger, more popular sectors.

An important factor to make sure you are correct here is: Is it the right time? If you have seen “2001 a Space Odyssey” they have a version of an iPad in the movie. The movie is from 1968, more than 40 years before the technology and the market was ready for such a thing. You would not want to wait that long for something to materialize.

2. Start by dominating a small market

The book here gives an example of Amazon that started in a small niche market, selling books. They used this as their launching pad for getting into other sectors later.

Also here you can apply this to the commodities market. You will have a better chance with over performing in a niche market like tin, tungsten or uranium than iron ore or coal. But as for every rule there are exceptions. For example, after the big fall in the oil price after 2014, a lot of the workforce had to leave the sector. After investment interest went down in the sector, competition among investors to find the best investments also went down.

3. Strive to be a monopoly

This point is about how you should not compete against other companies. You should be without competition as much as possible. By doing this you prevent the competition from eating away your profits. By doing this companies like Google can focus on improving, and creating new features which the customers will get advantage from.

I do not apply this to the companies by themselves, but more the sector by itself when it comes to commodities investing. The sector has to be the only solution for their customers. There should not be an easy substitute for them.

The uranium sector is the only source of fuel for the nuclear plants. There is no substitute for uranium to keeping them running. That is why, when the circumstances are right, the price utilities have to pay does not matter.

If you want to solder circuit boards you need tin. Tin is the glue metal. Before you could use lead for soldering, but due to regulatory requirements, plus the health and environmental benefits, tin is the only real alternative now.

Conclusion

This is something one must try to do with more than this example. From every aspect of your life you might have something you can transfer to another situation. From football you might have to learn to keep cool under pressure, from long distance running you might learn patience and perseverance. All things you can transfer to the rest of your life and maybe to investing. A lot of great things can happen if you go from zero to one.

The Inflation King

Preserving or increasing my purchasing power has been a big reason why I am investing in commodities. At the moment there is no agreement on what the massive amounts of money printing will lead to. Will we have massive inflation or deflation (or will we have stagflation)? For this week I have focused on the Inflation King.

I love reading about historical figures like the Robber Barons: I’ve read about the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Carnegies, Mellons and Morgans. The topic of today is Hugo Stinnes, more famously known as the Inflation King, or “Inflationskönig” in the original German. Most of the information on Hugo Stinnes has been in German, and I did not know that much about this Tycoon before I read the book ”The New Depression” by James Rickards.

If you have grown up in the West and paid attention at school, you know that Germany in the 1920s suffered hyperinflation. This led to a devastating loss of purchasing power for the general population in the country. People lost all their savings they had in the bank, and they had to pay for products with more and more of their currency. There are pictures of people carrying cash in wheelbarrows and kids playing with their useless currency.

The hyperinflation was caused by massive money printing for paying reparations for the First World War from the Treaty of Versailles. The result of this devastating loss of purchasing power for the population. The depression that followed sowed the seed for what came to pass in the 1930s and 1940s.

The reichsmark became worthless. The exchange rate between it and the US dollar went from 208 to 1 in early 1921 to 4.2 trillion in late 1923.

Hugo Stinnes was born in 1870 and was from a prosperous German family who had interests in the coal mining industry. Later Hugo inherited the business, and expanded it by buying more mines and diversifying into shipping, buying cargo lines. He could then use his own vessels to transport the coal. (With John D. Rockefeller making a lot of money on transporting oil, it was probably not a bad idea to be in charge of your own transportation). He also expanded the shipping to include lumber and grains.

Prior to the Weimar hyperinflation, Stinnes borrowed vast sums of money in reichsmarks to make more purchases in the different sectors. (I have not found out if he was just a very big gambler, or if he had read up on the works from the Austrian School or similar). When the hyperinflation hit, the value of coal, steel and the price for shipping retained their value, while the reichsmarks fell in value. (Hugo Stinnes also had investments outside Germany where the currencies had not lost their value on the same scale).

Stinnes was able to repay his debts in worthless reichsmarks from his profits from his investment in commodity production and shipping. The price of the commodity, and the shipping of the products, went up while the debts stayed the same. Stinnes made so much money during the Weimar hyperinflation that his German nickname was ‘Inflationskönig’, which means ‘Inflation King’.

The reason why I bring up the example of Hugo Stinnes is that we have heard mostly about the middle classes being destroyed. If you are prepared you can take advantage of this instead of becoming a victim. Hyperinflation has happened in several places. Three examples are in Hungary, Venezuela and in Zimbabwe. There are cautionary tales throughout history which illustrate the consequences when too much money gets printed.

My takeaway

Writing this I have not run to the bank and borrowed as much as possible to do the same. (However, I did increase my mortgage a bit. I had already paid down a lot on it, and the mortgage is less than two times my yearly salary). I am also using most of my monthly salary to add to my commodity investments. With countries printing trillions of fiat currency with no end in sight, the value of the currencies will go down. The deflationary pressure we have experienced since the 1980 with products imported from low cost countries will not be enough. The price of labor might still be low, but the price of the commodities that go into the products will go up. For commodities we have no new supply coming online at today’s prices.

As for currency default, my home currency is one of the few in the world that is not printing itself into oblivion. I am more worried about the USD than the Norwegian Krone. I have most of my investments outside my home currency in CAD, USD and AUD. I do not expect hyperinflation but a steady devaluation of most currencies and the commodities going up or keeping their value.

Printing new money (stimulus) is far easier for governments than the alternative, which is a full-blown deflation, crashing markets and a subsequent depression. In a depression, prices of everything drops in value and the purchasing power of the currency actually goes up, which encourages savings and hoarding cash. Why buy a car today (if you have the money), when you can buy the car next year for less currency. The thing with inflation is that it hurts people that have been good savers the most.

Inflation is already here. I go by the definition that inflation is an increase of money supply. “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Increasing prices, which we often call inflation, is a result of the inflation. The question is if we will see increasing prices on goods and services. For anyone who has seen the price of copper or lumber, or anything that is not included in the reported CPI, the answer is yes. We get a decline of purchasing power of a given currency over time.

I do not care if you are a Tin Baron or Uranium-, Silver-, or Gold bug. We will all be inflation kings.

The Big Commodity Short

This Sunday I will give my thoughts about the coming supercycle in commodities and why I am bullish on almost all of them going forward.

Most people are aware that I am a Uranium Bug and that I have a good allocation to precious metals. I have also just recently made my first allocation to the oil business, but I have to admit that I am optimistic about the whole commodity sector. I have tried to give an explanation for this enthusiasm in the following paragraphs.

Backdrop

Commodities are currently 50% cheaper than their lowest point the last 50 years if you compare them to the S&P 500. There are several reasons for this. The cyclical nature of commodities is that we go through boom and bust cycles. We have seen many of these over the decades. Still, the latest downturn has been exaggerated by a number of contributing factors:

A big factor is there is so much passive money waiting to chase the next big thing. We are looking back at 10 years where everyone has been piling into tech companies, weed and cryptocurrencies. Some people are maybe a bit agitated that these sectors have taken away money from commodities, but there is also a silver lining. Instead of having a better funded market, that might be in a supply and demand equilibrium, we are seeing great potential for outside returns on our investments.

I listened to a great interview with Mark Thompson on the podcast “Mining Stock Daily” in their “Tin Special”. He put into words what has been in the back of my mind about the commodities sector for a long time:

The median fund in the world’s allocation to commodities is zero, and most funds do not touch it. In the 80s and 90s, the risky part of people’s portfolios were either allocated to biotech or to commodities exploration. That part is now consumed by tech companies or bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) instead. We therefore have not had the needed allocation to commodities that you need to find new deposits. This has in turn affected the supply side. This underinvestment makes commodities very attractive after 10 years of underinvestment.

In the meantime commodities, which are essential for maintaining our living standards, have underperformed. The cost of producing the commodities is in many cases higher than what the companies make selling them. This has led to production cuts and supply being removed from the market. Prices have to increase a lot to incentivize production. However, this supply can’t be turned back on with a flip of a switch. Ramping up production takes time. The companies have to hire and train workers, permits have to be granted and CAPEX investments have to be made.

The easiest example I can choose from here is uranium. The world is totally dependent on uranium for the 10% of energy production coming from nuclear power. If we want a snowball’s chance in hell of making the climate goals, we can not depend on windmills and solar panels alone. At today’s prices the cost of producing uranium is higher than what they get paid by utilities. To incentivise new supply the price of uranium has to go up.

We have the same scenario with battery metals like lithium, nickel, tin and copper needed for electrification of the world. There are many other commodities that I have not mentioned, but safe to say I am bullish on most of them.

Passive funds influence on the markets

In the coming commodity super cycle we will see massive amounts of passive funds crowding into the different commodity sectors. Passive investing has increased by a lot the last 10 years, and this will hit the very small markets hard. This can have a bigger impact than most people can imagine. When 50% of the market is passive, it will be very different from the bull run in the early 2000s. Passive flows say: let’s buy what is going up no matter the price. Because of this you get big moves. I believe we will see new all time highs in most of the commodity sectors. Many of the sectors today are trading for a total value under the value of companies like Apple or Amazon. When passive funds see the outperformance of the different commodity sectors sustained over time, we will see a rotation away from growth/tech stocks. It is just a question of time.

We are seeing some evidence for this already. (Again, I will give some examples from the uranium sector, because it is the one I am following the closest). In Australia Paladin will be included on ASX 200 and 300 later this year. This means that there will be passive flows coming into the company and give the valuation of the company a tailwind. In Canada we have the same situation with Nexgen and Denison Mines will be added to the S&P/TSX Composite Index.

*Edit Jan 2023: I have added updated returns of URNM & QQQ Dec 2019 – Jan 2023 after the original post in March 2021.

The picture above is a comparison between QQQ (an ETF that includes 100 of the largest companies listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange) and URNM (the North Shore Global Uranium Mining ETF). The last year URNM has a return of 222% compared to 63% for the QQQ.

I expect this to be a trend we will see continue over the next 5 years. After overperformance the funds will rotate out of their old favorite sectors and enter the commodities sector. A couple more quarters of outperformance and we should witness the metaphor about forcing the contents of Hoover Dam through a straw coming to fruition.