The CRB hit its then-all-time high (462.74) in June 2008 as oil was on its way to hitting its all time high, $147.27, on July 11, 2008, I'm just sayin'.
First posted April 8, 2010 (and not updated, I'll get around to it, I swear):
I can't speak for the scholarship that went into this but just eyeballing, it seems okay with a couple exceptions.
We have wheat and hog stats that go back to the 1300's, this stuff is something that fascinates me.
From The Big Picture:
I love the mere concept of this chart from Jim Bianco — the CRB Index going all the back to the year 1,450:
courtesy of Bianco Research
>
About now, you may be saying to yourself, “How on earth could anyone find this ancient data — and can it possibly be accurate?”
The answers might surprise you:
The chart uses the following series (plotted monthly):
• 1749 to date: The Wholesale Price Index (now called the Producer Price Index) as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• 1749 to 1861: Statistical Tables of Commodity Prices from: Wholesale Commodity Prices in the
United States, 1700 to 1861, by Arthur Harrison Cole (Harvard University Press, 1938)
• 1749 to 1932: The Warren And Pearson Index of Commodity prices in New York, by George F. Warren and Frank A. Pearson (Wiley, 1933)
• 1782 to 1820: Jeavons Index compiled in 1865...MORE
An internal link in our 2008 post "Grain Reserves at 30 Year Lows":
Here's the ten second tutorial on Ag cycles:
The Hog Cycle
No not Harley-Davidson, although I imagine some econ grad student has written the paper.
Wheat and hogs are two commodities with long price series. We mentioned the hog cycle back in January:
The hog price series is one of the longest we have records for, back to the 1200's. The cycle is:
slaughter begets scarcity begets higher prices begets breeding begets over-supply begets slaughter. It's been going on for a while....
