“All these people who got MBAs made a mistake,” according to Jim Rogers, the commodities investor, at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit last month.
“The City of London and Wall Street are not going to be great places to be in the next two or three decades. It’s going to be the people who produce real goods in charge – the farmers and the miners.”
With commodities up 42pc since the beginning of last year, according to a basket tracked by Reuters, his words certainly ring true for 2010. An array of metals from gold to copper have hit record highs, while palladium has doubled and silver is up 83pc.
Coal, potash and other mining companies have also been a key target of merger and acquisition activity.
We believe this isn’t just a short-term rally, and would argue that commodities will have another bull run this year, driven by fundamental demand from emerging economies – principally China.