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China's Improbable Commodities Frenzy Leaves Stocks in the Dust
The wild ride in China’s commodity futures is making the nation’s $5.9 trillion stock market look docile. Here’s the action in charts: Compared with the stock market, even eggs have been a better investment in China in 2016, with futures climbing 27 percent. That’s as the cost of a dozen eggs in the U.S. slumped 24 percent in the first quarter. The epicenter of the commodities boom, however, has been steel reinforcement bars, which have surged 38 percent. The dizzying increase in speculative activity prompted the head of the world’s largest metals exchange to say that some traders probably don’t even know ... (full story)