Looks like Miss Piggy, my large black Sow and my new beef calf Marty where even better choices then I thought 😛
Gold is being outpaced by two unlikely candidates: Cows and pigs.
“Given all the uncertainty in financial markets, inflation fears, and negative real interest rates, anyone might be forgiven for thinking that gold was the star performer among commodities over the past year,” says Kenrick Jordan of BMO Nesbitt Burns. “Well, it turns out that it wasn’t. It was eclipsed by some much less lustrous counterparts.”
As Mr. Jordan notes, gold (GC-FT) has gained a “not-too-shabby” 24 per cent, while hog prices have climbed 29 per cent and cattle prices 25 per cent.
“Robust demand from developing countries and discipline in trimming herds to better match market needs have buoyed livestock prices.”
Pork prices have, in a roundabout way, fed into some of the gyrations in the markets over the past several months. They’ve been a big factor in overall price increases in China, which has waged a battle against inflation that has led to fears of monetary tightening in turn choking demand in the engine of the global recovery.
But China’s latest numbers showed the annual inflation rate tumbling in October to 5.5 per cent, from 6.1 per cent in September, driven by a monthly decline of 1.8 per cent in pork prices that, according to Capital Economics, will “probably continue to fall due to a steady increase in the pig population.”
Just another Day on the Farm 