Fisher Investments on Materials: Key Drivers

Though Fisher Investments acknowledges that the list below is by no means comprehensive, the most important Materials drivers include:

1. Economic growth
2. Commodity prices
3. Commodity production growth
4. Exploration and development costs
5. Production costs
6. Share buybacks and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity
7. Investor sentiment
8. Taxes, politics, and regulations

Reference Fisher Investments on Materials for more detail.

Economic Growth
As Fisher Investments describes in Chapter 1, economic growth is one of the dominant Materials demand drivers. For example, by looking at global GDP per capita and per capita expenditure on basic materials and (particularly) metals, we know there's almost a direct correlation — higher economic output leads to increased basic material consumption. As the developing world continues industrializing and global GDP per capita increases, the demand for basic materials will increase dramatically.