Five Key Charts to Watch in Global Commodity Markets This Week

Holdings in exchange-traded funds backed by gold are taking a beating following Donald Trump’s US election win. The global appetite for more chicken is giving poultry producers a lift. And as the United Nations’ COP29 climate summit enters its second week, European data shows we’re losing the fight to limit global warming.

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Bloomberg News

Eva Brendel, Lucia Kassai and Yvonne Yue Li

Published Nov 17, 2024  •  2 minute read

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(Bloomberg) — Holdings in exchange-traded funds backed by gold are taking a beating following Donald Trump’s US election win. The global appetite for more chicken is giving poultry producers a lift. And as the United Nations’ COP29 climate summit enters its second week, European data shows we’re losing the fight to limit global warming.

Here are five notable charts to consider in global commodity markets as the week gets underway.

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Gold

Gold tumbled after Trump’s election victory, with the outcome removing political uncertainty in the US and reducing haven demand for the metal. That triggered a rotation from bullion to Bitcoin, bolstered by speculation that the incoming administration will back crypto-friendly policies. SPDR Gold Shares, the world’s largest gold-backed ETF, had it biggest weekly outflow in more than two years during election week. BlackRock Inc.’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF saw a record daily net inflow on Nov. 7. Bloomberg Intelligence expects US spot Bitcoin ETF assets could be triple those of gold ETFs in three to five years. 

Poultry

The world is eating more chicken, and that’s helping fuel earnings at poultry producers. The latest round of quarterly results by companies including Tyson Foods Inc. and Brazilian giants BRF SA and JBS SA showed profit margins at significantly higher levels than a year ago. The producers have taken advantage of the bonanza to pay down debt and return capital to shareholders. BRF and JBS, which controls poultry suppliers Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. and Seara SA, are also signaling more capital spending for next year.

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Oil

US Gulf Coast refineries are on fire. The region — one of the world’s largest refinery hubs — boosted processing for the sixth straight week to 9.31 million barrels a day, according to the latest weekly report from the US Energy Information Administration. That marks a seasonal record in EIA data going back to 1992. Meanwhile, nationwide oil processing in the US is at the highest since 2018 on a seasonal basis. The surge comes as profit margins to make fuels are healthy amid low inventories of both gasoline and diesel.

Renewables

With power demand surging, companies are lining up deals to lock in electricity supplies at a record pace, according to BloombergNEF. The global volume of deals signed in the first 10 months of this year reached 33.9 gigawatts, on track to surpass last year’s record high. The US is the world’s top market for corporate power-purchase deals, accounting for 116 gigawatts since 2015. A gigawatt is enough to supply more than 850,000 average US households.

Climate

As global delegates gather for the second week of the UN’s COP29 climate summit, data from the European Union shows it’s “virtually certain” that this year will be the warmest on record. The Copernicus Climate Change Service said this month that 2024 will likely be more than 1.55C above the pre-industrial level. That pushes past the threshold identified at the UN’s 2015 climate summit, when nations endorsed the Paris Agreement that aims to pursue efforts to limit temperature increases to 1.5C above levels seen before the Industrial Revolution.

—With assistance from Will Wade and Gerson Freitas Jr..

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