Goldman commodity veteran sees unprecedented pricing due to shortages

Jeff Currie, the closely followed head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs Group, says he has never seen commodity markets pricing in the shortages they are right now. 

“I’ve been doing this 30 years and I’ve never seen markets like this,” Currie said in an interview. “This is a molecule crisis. We’re out of everything, I don’t care if it’s oil, gas, coal, copper, aluminium, you name it we’re out of it.”

Futures curves in several markets are trading in super-backwardation — a structure that indicates traders are paying bumper premiums for immediate supply. The downward-sloping shape in prices is generally taken to mean commodities are severely undersupplied.