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The party that changed its guests — the 2.27-deviation collapse of commodities in June 2010

Episode

The extreme

The headline number said party. The domestic detail climbed into clearly bought territory, the regime closed in risk_on, and anyone reading only that would have concluded the month was one of celebration. But the celebration changed its guests without notice. The asset that had led the rally of the previous years — raw materials — left the stage in silence, plunging in the relative comparison. In numbers: the Commodities/IBOV ratio fell from a z of 0.58 to −1.69, a drop of 2.27 deviations, the single largest move in the structure; the Perene Risk Index rose from 45.0 to 68.9; but the intermarket cooled from 50.75 to 33.09 (moderate risk_off), with the exchange rate at R$ 1.8065.

What happened next

Leadership did not return to commodities — it passed from hand to hand for a year. In September 2010, the money came back in through the banks' door: Finance/IBOV jumped from −0.32 to 1.14, the month's biggest gesture, and the intermarket closed at 76.84, strong appetite. Commodities only recovered relative ground, still below the average. In December 2010, another rotation: the banks pulled back (from 2.21 to 0.48), the cyclical axis crossed into negative, and it was commodities that came back to hold up the structure. In June 2011, the cycle repeated in reverse — finance left the infirmary and commodities in reais gave way again.

What did not happen

The bought headline did not mean a clean rally with a stable leader. Commodities did not pull the recovery: anyone who read June's risk_on as "everything rises together" missed what mattered. And the exchange rate masked the weakness — the basket in reais rose (from −0.17 to 0.44) in the same month its international version collapsed. The engine of the rally swapped a part every quarter for twelve months; the surface index barely registered the rotation.

The honest verdict

The detail reading got the bought regime right, but had no way of saying who would lead — and leadership was the only thing actually moving. A market can rise while changing protagonists, and that is what it did. The headline number told the party; only the interior said the guests had changed.

Continue reading: The money comes back in through the banks · The end of 2010 — confidence and credit · The end of the commodities' reign →

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Characters: Structure (intermarket) · Flow (risk appetite) · Mood · Dollar · Commodities · Statistical anomaly