Broyhill Asset Management: On Gold & China

We expect China’s slow down (hard landing) to be much more severe than the consensus and given its disproportionate share of the world’s commodity consumption, the impact will be most uncomfortable for the world’s metal exporters.  We continue to believe that the Australian economy is the most vulnerable to crack’s in China’s façade given its concentration of trading partners (China now represents 28% of Australian exports up from 6% a decade ago) and its concentration of exports (as ores and metals make up 72% of goods shipped to the mainland).  But Australia is not alone in its vulnerability.  The CRABS are the commodity rich countries that are riding China’s spending spree.  They are Canada, Russia, Australia, Brazil and South Africa. We think the CRABS will ultimately be a much bigger problem than the PIGS.