” The cure for high prices is high prices. The cure for low prices is low prices”
This is one of the most common questions being circulated in the financial media. You will notice the level of public interest from these charts.
I hope you had a pleasant holiday season. Now that the eggnog has run out (although probably more likely the rum), your trees and menorahs have been put away until next year, and you are getting back to work in this cold weather (what else is there to do when it is this cold except work). Lets see what the new year has brought for us as a present. In this month’s issue I will mainly be discussing oil prices and the US Dollar. The two areas which are generating the most interest.
To start the year I am going to play around with the format a bit to see what works best for people. In this months issue I am planning on breaking the bottom section of the Inflation Monitor into separate excerpts through out the month based on thoughts or ideas that I have had rather than wait until the end of the month. I will try to spread this out a bit more a see if this is a more desirable setup. While this might be a bit scatterbrained, it might get back to what this section was supposed to be: inflation monitor data, then some ideas, not a lengthy dissertation. This month was difficult to focus on much else since oil has played such a large part of the public’s interest. So we will focus more on oil and the US Dollar.
This is the first issue of the Innovative Advisory Group Inflation Monitor in 2015. We continue to receive a lot of positive feedback on our first few issues of the Inflation Monitor. As you will notice, we have taken some of this feedback and make some minor adjustments to our issues each month. As always, please contact me to send your feedback on how I can make this monthly Inflation Monitor a better tool or resource for you.
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy this month’s issue – Inflation Monitor January 2015.
Kirk Chisholm
For Christmas I asked Santa to get me a crystal ball. He rarely disappoints. Hopefully after reading this post you will have some insight into my thoughts and the future direction of oil prices.
Commodity prices in general have been declining for years. According to the Rogers International Commodity Index, the commodity super-cycle peaked in Jun 2008. While it is still possible that we could break those all time highs, it is highly unlikely given the deflationary forces at play in the global markets. If you have been reading the inflation monitor for a number of months you know which side of the inflation-deflation fence I sit on. The future of commodity prices will most likely continue on the path that they are currently on. There does not seem to be inflation on the horizon of commodity prices.
Investing in a commodity is a difficult task since it produces no cash flow. So how do you price a commodity? Many smart investors have raised this point before. You cannot say what is the correct price of a commodity unless you have a free market determining the price based on supply and demand. This is basic Economic 101. While reality should be driven by data and facts, in some cases it isn’t. One of these cases in Oil.
Oil is what I would call a political commodity. What this means is…