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Latest reports

For archived latest reports, click here.

Thursday 2nd July 2009

• Fortis Bank/VM Group Agricommodities Monthly June

The Fortis Bank/VM Group Agricommodity Monthly for June is published today and it contains plenty of appetitising reading and analysis - why President Medvedev of Russia's idea of forming a multi-national grains buffer stock is doomed to failure: why El Nino looks like it is back and poses a real threat to the 2010 season's crops in many parts of the world: and why the latest USDA assessment of US farmers' planting intentions may well put fresh spark into soybean futures' prices later this year. This month's edition is a Cocoa special - detailed supply-demand data form the core of the report and we have revised our estimates for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 global balance - which remains very tight and may get tighter, if El Nino gets a firm grip by December 2009. Plus, of course, all the regular news and views on a wide range of soft commodities and an assessment of the relative rates of investment returns in the 12 leading agricommodities.

For back issues and background information on the report, click here.

• Fortis Bank/VM Group Asian Metals Monthly June

The two main features in June's issue of the Fortis Bank/VM Group Asian Metals Monthly focus on China and aluminium. For us, the "decoupling" theory regarding China, which argued essentially that its economy had become big enough to prevent it being hit by the recession, never rang true. China has suffered too. What's needed now is some planning about how best to re-couple the rest of the world's economy to that of China. The aluminium feature inevitably considers China too. Its policy of supporting the country's domestic smelters by creating strategic stockpiles of the metal has helped them to survive - but only at the risk of a much longer, drawn-out structural problem for the global aluminium market. We face the risk of this market's supply-demand fundamentals becoming much more opaque. Plus all the regular price forecasts, updates of LME stocks and news pages on other base and precious metals.

For back issues and background information on the report, click here.

Tuesday 23rd June 2009

• Fortis Bank/VM Group Metals Monthly June

The first of our two features considers the spurning of Chinalco by Rio Tinto. This has bruised Chinese feelings but more important will mean much tougher pricing power over iron ore supplies swings back to the producers. Inevitably at some point the annual iron ore contract will crumble away - but that will be no bad thing. And we look at silver - which has more positive supply-demand fundamentals than for many years.

For back issues and background information on the report, click here.

Thursday 11th June 2009

• Fortis Bank/VM Group Renewable Energy Monthly June

The first of our two features looks at ethical investing, and asks: is renewable energy poised on the bring of an investment boom? The second studies energy efficiency drives in the US and Europe - where some of the worst culprits are the homes we live in and the offices where we work.

For back issues and background information on the report, click here.

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