Mongolian Commodity Prospects: Copper, Coal, Iron Ore and Uranium What makes Mongolia so hot in the future

John Johnson,
CEO, CRU China

At C-R-U we focus on commodities, with teams of experts looking at supply, demand, prices, and costs.
The periodic table  here shows you the coverage we have on a regular product basis and bespoke coverage.
As an independent company, we conduct commercial due diligence on individual projects, and also have a great deal of technical know-how. 
We publish daily, monthly, quarterly and annual reports, providing insight and forecasts.
Nowadays we are increasingly asked which commodity is the best investment – whether from a financial investment basis or  on an individual mine or  downstream plant project basis.
This is a difficult question to answer, largely because it not only depends upon your views about the future, but it also depends upon what criterion you want to use to judge a good investment.
So how do you choose a good commodity?  Or a Hot commodity!
 

You could of course look at price prospects.  This shows you an index of price trends from our most recent quarterly price forecasts (2005-2014).  These metals prices have been reduced to an index format for comparability purposes. The price in 2005 = 100. 
This suggests that copper, gold and lead perform relatively well, with iron ore and nickel doing ok, but zinc, aluminium, steel and coking coal back to where they were.
You clearly need to have a robust price forecasting methodology.
The attractiveness also depends upon how such prices compare to costs of production and in this chart the relative price performance in 2005.
This does this tell you the whole story?  For example, hard coking coal prices fob Australia more than doubled in 2005 from $57 to $125, so it was a good year.

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