For Investors: Theme For 2021 -- Incredible Bull Run, 2021 - 2026

Updates

January 19, 2022: Goldman Sachs calls for a 10-year commodity supercycle. Link to Alex Kimani. Archived. Copper is the new oil.

Original Post

At the sidebar at the right, I have a link to "Themes: 2021."

For investors, the 2021 theme is an incredible bull run from 2021 to 2026.

More support for this incredible bull run over the next five year: this could be the hottest summer ever -- for freight. From ZeroHedge.

The Inbound Ocean TEU Volume Index (IOTI), which measures maritime bookings for twenty-foot equivalent units for U.S. imports, is set to hit an all-time high this week. 

The IOTI starts in January 2019 but covers one of the most active periods in maritime shipping thanks to the pandemic. 

With imports being tied more closely than ever to surface freight volumes and transportation demand, this could be a signal of an extremely active summer for domestic surface transportation providers.

But we've been here before, leading up to the holiday season, November / December, 2021.

More from the linked article:

Import booking activity measures freight that will hit the U.S. two to six weeks in advance and has been connected to surface transportation volumes over the past year. 

After a quicker-than-anticipated recovery in consumer spending on durable goods last spring, shippers found themselves low on inventory and began placing orders at a record pace last May.

Whereas the connection between truckload and import volumes has not always been this close, the urgency of the past year has closed the gap between the time the freight is on the ship to the time it moves on a truck.

With many shippers caught off guard by changing consumer behaviors, there was no budget or plan for what occurred in most of 2020. Companies have found themselves playing catch-up most of the year, and the recent surge in consumer spending thanks to a new stimulus bill and continued quarantine this winter has not helped them recover.

The IOTI shows bookings up to a week in advance, meaning it is measuring freight that is being requested to leave their ports of origin over the next seven days. The spike in bookings over the next week is on the heels of a longer-running increase that began in late January.

Most interesting data point in that ZeroHedge article: the impact on the trucking industry. A google search revealed this: in March, 2021, demand for Class 8 trucks was up 103% year-over-year. 

There was good news and some questionable news over the weekend. The good news can be summed by the trucking industry deciding it needed more vehicles last month, pushing up sales 108% year-over-year. 

There was another sale, though, that could generate more questions from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is investigating former Nikola CEO Trevor Milton. He sold 3.5 million of his Nikola shares for $49 million six months after he resigned in a cloud of controversy. 

Another google search revealed this: legacy automakers see massive spike in sales.  

BMW is the latest legacy automaker to smash its sales comps for Q1, as automakers benefit from 2020's poor sales due to the pandemic. BMW said it delivered 636,606 BMW, MINI, and Rolls-Royce vehicles to customers during the quarter. The figure isn't just a 33.5% rise in sales for the automaker, it's also a new all-time high for sales for the company's first quarter.

Not unlike other legacy automakers, BMW also saw a massive surge in electric vehicles. Its sales of EVs more than doubled to 70,207 units during the quarter. Total sales rose by 8.3% in Europe, 17,3% in the Americas, and an astounding 76.4% in Asia - thanks to Q1 2020's lockdowns. 

Recall, yesterday we noted that Mercedes also smashed its Q1 numbers. Sales were up 22% in Q1 thanks to not only easy comps but also record demand out of China. Globally, Mercedes-Benz sold 581,270 cars and saw its China sales figures rise by 60%. China is the biggest market for the brand and had the most favorable comps, similar to BMW. 

Truck sales here: 

The pop for both automakers in North America shouldn't be too much of a surprise. We wrote just days ago that most legacy automakers in the U.S. were posting fantastic Q1 comps.

And, in general: