Let me get out my crystal ball and make some commodity price predictions about the next two or three weeks…

  • Oil and Copper prices will rise
  • Gold and Cattle Futures will fall

What makes me think that I can predict something like this?

FT Alphaville: Beware, commodity index rebalancing ahead

?The major commodity indices rebalance their respective asset weightings once a year (or occasionally more) – and with that comes a mass dose of buying and selling. The 2009 rebalancing is expected to start sometime this week.

Luckily, JP Morgan has produced its best guess of how the 2009 reweightings of the DJ AIGCI and the S&P GSCI indices will impact the market.

The weightings for both indices are released ahead of time, but begin to kick in the first few working days of the new year. In the case of the DJ-AIGCI – which JP Morgan estimates has $25 billion in funds tracking it – the new weightings come into force during the roll period that begins January 9. The S&P GSCI index weightings kick-in after its January roll which commences January 8. JP Morgan estimates about $50 billion of investment into that index.

JP Morgan see the most significant change coming in the DJ-AIGCI rebalance. Here the market weight of crude oil is expected to increase from 9.6% to 13.8%, gold from 10.8% to 7.9%, copper (COMEX) from 4.5% to 7.3%, live cattle from 6.4% to 4.3% and sugar from 4.7% to 3.0%. Meanwhile, S&P GSCI crude oil weight will go from 32% to 33.8%?.

Don’t be surprised if we see volatility kick up a notch from here…