Trustnet Magazine 76 September 2021 | Page 9

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odities trustnet . com recovery ”. As an example , he pointed to the price of Brent crude oil , which is up more than 150 % since its March 2020 bottom .
Swinging back However , there is more to the commodities story than just a shortterm recovery play , according to Georges Lequime , manager of the TB Amati Strategic Metals fund . Just as investors in the sector got overexcited in the first 10 years of the millennium , leading to a flood of money and problems with over-expansion ,

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MSCI World / Metals & Mining ( 349.3 %)
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Lequime says the pendulum may now have swung too far the other way . “ The really exciting part is that the mining companies haven ’ t got the limelight in the past 10 to 15 years ,” he explains . “ You ’ re looking at tech and other sectors that have done really well and attracted capital : it hasn ’ t gone into mining , which means it hasn ’ t gone into exploration , which means we haven ’ t had enough new discoveries of metals , so supply is lagging behind the growth in demand . “ It looks like in the late 2020s , from 2026 onwards , we ’ re going to have real deficits .” In addition , the industry is now unrecognisable from the one that seemed to focus on volume alone in the early part of the millennium . With miners forced to learn some hard lessons when boom turned to bust , Olivia Markham , co-manager of the BlackRock GF World Mining fund , notes that many of these are now wellrun operations with strong balance sheets offering decent dividend yields . “ We are encouraged by what we are hearing from management teams in terms of maintaining their focus on
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