CRB Index Vs. Emerging Markets

I talked about how the emerging markets and especially China depend on commodities. If China does well, the commodities will do well. The mining industry (example Australia) will follow this trend. This means that the CRB index is correlated to the emerging markets.

This is illustrated by a nice chart from Ed Yardeni.

Apparently Ed believes the commodity supercycle has reached its end since 2011, contrary to what Peter Schiff believes. I do think that the mining industry had a huge boom since 2000 and is now in the process of unwinding. Commodities have been flat because the U.S. dollar was strong. But I don’t think the Western world is in such a good shape as Ed thinks, that’s why I think this commodity cycle is not over yet.

Buy Emerging Market Stocks in 2014

One of the reasons I’m bullish on emerging market stocks is because they underperformed the U.S. in 2013. But most importantly, the P/E ratio of these emerging market stocks is at all time lows (P/E=11), while the P/E ratio in the U.S. is at 22. This is a valuation of more than double the emerging market stocks.

PE ratio

I think this underperformance in EM stocks is due to the underperformance of the CRB index as compared to U.S. stocks, which can also be seen here. Stocks went up (yellow line), but the CRB index (orange line) went down.

Stocks Vs. CRB Index

I believe the CRB index is now in a recovery phase. China’s power consumption has been steadily increasing.

China Power Consumption

That’s why I’m bullish on emerging market stocks. If you’re not convinced yet, don’t believe me, listen to Peter Schiff.

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