Commodity currencies are set to sparkle in 2006, says Trevor Williams, chief economist at Lloyds TSB Financial Markets in London

Commodity prices have risen sharply in the past few years, and this has been of major benefit to the oil and gold exporting countries’ currencies. But looking at the commodity price trends since 2001, the category that has seen some of the fastest annual increases are not in fact gold and oil, but base metals (commodities such as copper, aluminium and nickel, used in the process of making goods). This should not be surprising, and is not, if we look at the factors that lie behind the rise.

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