For example, there have been big drops in key industrial commodities like copper and oil.
From 2000 to 2008, even though gold nearly quadrupled in price, industrial commodities rose even faster.
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Industrial commodities like copper and aluminum, and consumables like corn and pork bellies, have not done much better.
Founded in 2003, MCX is a commodity exchange for the trading of metals and agricultural and industrial commodities.
For investors in commodities, a prolonged Chinese stagnation means lower demand for commodities, especially industrial commodities, and therefore lower prices.
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She is less sanguine about copper, aluminum and other industrial commodities, whose prices went through the roof during 1970s stagflation.
Businesses scramble to borrow money to construct these capital-intensive projects, which appear to be profitable, creating huge demand for industrial commodities.
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Oil prices have fallen by a third since last July, and The Economist's industrial commodities price index is down by a quarter.
In the initial break in 2008 after the failure of Lehman Brothers, stock markets and industrial commodities such as crude oil and copper fell quickly.
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Economic data is key to the health of the industrial commodities.
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Much of the U.S. economic data over the last month has been softer than expected, raising concerns about future consumption of industrial commodities such as copper.
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That growth is likely to pause to catch its breath after the games, which would be bearish for the prices of oil and all industrial commodities.
Risk appetite, particularly for the industrial commodities, shot up after the positive manufacturing data out of China and a very positive quarter-over-quarter GDP figure out of Australia.
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Meanwhile, those same worries have led to ideas that demand could suffer for industrial commodities, which includes platinum along with the likes of copper and crude oil.
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Some analysts have suggested platinum group metals could be among the metals that outperform if sentiment for industrial commodities were not getting dinged by the European debt crisis.
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Similarly disturbing statistics are true for many other industrial commodities.
Among other recent changes is a likely increase in the weighting assigned to the Australian dollar due to its position as a key supplier of industrial commodities to China.
In particular, platinum has tumbled lately with other industrial commodities on worries that the economies of developed nations will slip into a recession similar to 2008 after the Lehman Brothers collapse.
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That's why some 30% of the portfolio is in the energy, industrial commodities, manufacturing and transportation areas, outfits like Dow Chemical, Phillips Petroleum, Union Pacific, FedEx, Rio Tinto, Alcoa, Deere, Caterpillar and International Paper.
China is the incremental buyer of industrial commodities (here is a factoid: it is responsible for two-thirds of global demand for iron ore), so even if we have inflation, commodity prices will still decline with plummeting demand when China cuts back.
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Using the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index as a proxy for the costs of mining (because it is heavily weighted towards industrial commodities), the real cost of mining gold jumped by nearly 50% during this period, explaining why gold stocks did not provide the leverage that gold investors expected.
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The country has an insatiable appetite for commodities, especially industrial metals and energy.
Strong FAI is bullish for commodities demand as increased industrial activity and construction gobbles up more cement, iron ore, crude oil and copper.
And, for the moment, "Dutch Disease" is a real concern: a hollowing out of Brazil's industrial sector, as the boom in commodities (plus a hugely competitive China) gradually prices them out of world markets, and the Brazilian one.
Since oil is easily substituted for natural gas in many industrial and electrical turbines, prices of the two commodities tend to be correlated (coal less so).
Freight business includes transport of bulk mineral commodities, including iron ore, agricultural products, mining and industrial inputs and general freight throughout Queensland and Western Australia.
As our commodities team has highlighted, the intensity of use for some industrial metals such as copper and steel will decline markedly over the next few years.
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