Commodities Notched Their Best Year Since 2009, Despite Precious Metals Weakness

Commodities Notched Their Best Year Since 2009, Despite Precious Metals Weakness

Share to Linkedin Every year around this time, we update our always-popular Periodic Table of Commodities Returns. I invite you to compare 2021's returns to previous years, download a PDF of the table and more by clicking here. Commodities as a whole had their best year in over a decade, due in large part to inflation triggered by unprecedented global monetary and fiscal stimulus. The Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index ended 2021 with a gain of 27%, the biggest yearly jump since 2009, when the financial crisis similarly prompted governments and central banks to flood their economies with liquidity. The best performing commodity component was energy, with natural gas up close to 47%, crude oil up 55% and Powder River Basin coal up an eye-popping 160%. Energy increased at double the rate as the second-best category, industrial metals. Aluminum led these materials with an increase of 42%, followed by zinc (up 31%), nickel (26%), copper (26%) and lead (18%). As expected, precious metals were the worst-performing category, down 8%. None of the constituents ended the year in positive territory. That includes gold, which was the best performer of the bunch with a loss of 3. 6%, despite inflation at a decades-long