Historical Performance of Commodity and Stock Markets

This paper examines two interrelated issues in commodity markets, namely, the cyclical relationship between stocks and commodities and the function of commodity and agribusiness indexes in portfolios. A high negative correlation has existed between stock and commodity prices over the past 140 years. Moreover, the two markets have alternated in price leadership with 29-32-year cycles. The recent price dominance in agricultural commodities started in 2000, a result supported by the empirical results of the portfolio allocation analysis. For a risk-averse investor, irrespective of the period analyzed, placing funds in agribusiness and/or agricultural commodity indexes was sound investing.