Jason Benderly c.s. has been churning the data and constructed models for commodities based on mainly the ISM, monetary policy, the strength of the US $ and the growth of the industrial production in Asia (he took the all commodities index HWWI, the broadest commodity index).
The chart above gives his scenarios with much growth in the US soft landing in China to little growth in the US and hard landing in China.
For 2012 we seem to have seen most of the rise because of the weak growth in China and also the ISM probably will not rise much further and the US $ is too strong. By the way, the ISM is now high enough to get (ceteris paribus) higher commodity prices.
The monetary policy produces with some delay higher commodity prices. The easy monetary policy is without much doubt causing higher commodity prices at the moment.
Better growth in Asia in 2013 would be enough to get higher commodity prices next year.
Benderly is rather optimistic about the US growth in 2013 (despite the fiscal hurdles), but maybe too pessimistic about the growth in China. A hard landing in China while the US avoids recession would cause commodity prices to dive with 15-20% annualised.
