Heavy metal prices go up over the month

MUMBAI: International prices of most commodities such as copper, zinc, nickel, iron ore and oil have increased by 5-16% over the past month. Stocks of global mining companies such as Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Glencore and Anglo American too have gained 16% to 53% during the period. Is this a temporary bounce back of beginning of a trend reversal? Not many would have an accurate answer to this. But some experts believe that worst could be over for the commodities, and a sharper downfall from here on looks less likely.



“Most of the base metals fell sharply last year. Crude oil and natural gas were also falling as there were concerns related to consumption due to slower economic growth. Now a kind of bargain buying has taken place.” Harish Galipelli, commodities head at Inidtrade. “I do not ex-pect a major fall now, mostly these commodities should consolidate for some time now,” he said. This could be good news for several Indian commodity companies such as Vedanta, Hindustan Zinc, Hindalco, NALCO, NMDC, ONGC and Cairn India. Stocks of these companies too have showed good strength in the recent correction in the Indian equity markets giving positive returns in the last one month despite Nifty being 4.4% down. However, the gains have not been as high as their global peers.