Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Commodities: Chanos Says We Have A Looming Oversupply Problem

Looming?
See, maybe, FT Alphaville's 30-part 'Beyond Scarcity' series: June 7, 2012-Oct. 12, 2015.
From Business Insider:
Investor Jim Chanos, founder of short-biased hedge fund Kynikos Associates, laid out his bearish view of the commodities space on Bloomberg TV on Monday. 
To Chanos, and investors like Paul Tudor Jones, the world is seeing the end of a decade-long commodities cycle, in which China's entrance to the WTO in 2001 created a seemingly insatiable demand for raw materials that affected prices across the planet. 
But now that China is going through a painful economic transition, its hunger for commodities is waning. 
It happened before some investors realized what was going on, according to Chanos, especially when it comes to natural gas. 
"All this capacity is coming on in Asia. To meet Asian demand that has actually been flat for the last three years," Chanos said. "And we think we have a looming oversupply problem in LNG."He said this did not relate to Cheniere, the natural-gas company he is shorting 
"But primarily in Australia and elsewhere in the Pacific basin, production is basically about to double in the next handful of years on flat demand. And that doesn't sound good to us."...MORE
And here is Mr. Chanos on Bloomberg: