World Perspectives

No Inflation Hedge

Former trader and now academic Ivo Sarjanovic has a new book entitled, “Commodities as an Asset Class.” He was inspired to write on the topic out of frustration that investment banks were encouraging clients to invest in commodities as a hedge against inflation. Sarjanovic knew from his many years of direct experience in commodities that the advice was overly broad, and dangerously wrong if it was a passive investment in an index fund.  Via his own statistical research, Sarjanovic argues agriculture may be the worst hedge since its productivity gains have been faster and the supply can be more quickly changed with one or two crop cycles. Petroleum has a better correlation with inflation than metals/minerals. Notably, he be...

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From WPI Consulting

Illuminating the value of technical research

On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.

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