Commodities Giant Glencore Hits Decade High on Price Boom

Shares of the mining and trading giant hit highest since 2012 as demand prospects fuel talk of years-long commodity super-cycle.

Commodities giant Glencore Plc hit the highest in almost a decade, driven by rallies in everything from metals to coal and optimism for a years-long super-cycle.

The world’s biggest commodity trader surpassed its 2018 intraday peak on Tuesday, valuing the Swiss company at about $74 billion.

Like its mining rivals, Glencore has benefited from massive global stimulus measures that have stoked demand for raw materials, and has also been a big winner from an energy crunch that sent coal prices to a record high.

The big shareholder groups in Glencore have power over the company. Institutions often own shares in more established companies, while it’s not unusual to see insiders own a fair bit of smaller companies.

Glencore is a pretty big company. It has a market capitalization of UK£53b. Normally institutions would own a significant portion of a company this size. In the chart below, we can see that institutional investors have bought into the company. Let’s delve deeper into each type of owner, to discover more about Glencore.

Institutions typically measure themselves against a benchmark when reporting to their own investors, so they often become more enthusiastic about a stock once it’s included in a major index. We would expect most companies to have some institutions on the register, especially if they are growing.