Coal Provides 2016’s Biggest Lesson

Want to learn the biggest lesson of 2016? Look no further than commodity prices. The first 10 months of the year have seen an extraordinary rebound in sentiment towards commodities, particularly coal. There was a lot of money to be made as well as an important lesson to be learned. But first, let’s set the scene. Successful contrarian investing involves going against the crowd. And sentiment is a measure of what the crowd is thinking. How to measure sentiment? One way is to read media articles, particularly newspaper headlines. This gives us a qualitative insight as to what stage sentiment is at. At the start of 2016 miners and the contractors who service them were the most out of favour part of the market. Uncertainty as to whether many mining operations were a going concern was rife. A large chunk of the best performing fund managers from 2012 to 2015 had a simple and effective strategy. Short mining, long everything else. Read full blogpost (VIEW LINK)