From the perspective of exchange rate parity, if the exchange rate of RMB against the US dollar falls, the commodity prices represented by money will converge, that is, the domestic commodity prices priced in RMB will gradually move closer to the international commodity prices priced in US dollars, and the domestic commodity prices will naturally be under pressure, but it will boost the foreign commodity prices, and the two are close.
Judging from the flow of international "hot money", due to the strong expectation of RMB appreciation, "hot money" will flow into China's "gambling" and the high profits brought by this trend. If it is invested heavily in the commodity futures market, it will boost the overall price of domestic commodities. On the whole, these two aspects have opposite effects, that is, one is bullish on domestic commodity prices, and the other is bearish on domestic commodity prices.
China imports a large amount of refined copper, scrap copper and copper concentrate from the international market every year, and the settlement price is denominated in US dollars. If the exchange rate of RMB against the US dollar fluctuates greatly, it will have a great impact on the import link. The following figure shows the trend of copper import cost and import profit and loss in China, in which the places circled by the author reflect the strong expectation of RMB appreciation and the impact of RMB appreciation on import arbitrage in the copper market. According to the author's calculation, during the period of 20081October 27th165438+February 5th, the exchange rate of RMB against the US dollar depreciated by 0.78%, which led to a sharp increase in spot prices of domestic and foreign copper markets by 8% and futures prices by 5.5%. During the period from February 5, 65438 to May 5, 2009, the RMB appreciated 1% against the US dollar. At that time, the spot price and futures price of copper market also rose, which were 0.56% and 8.32% respectively. From this point of view, it is biased to simply consider the price comparison based on the appreciation and depreciation of RMB against the US dollar. In fact, the domestic and international copper market prices began to drop significantly from the end of April to the end of June, 2009, and entered a low-level wandering pattern after the end of June. Therefore, two conclusions are summarized:
The appreciation of RMB against the US dollar will not be immediately reflected in the price comparison of imported raw materials, but will often be advanced;
The price of imported raw materials will definitely be affected by appreciation, but this effect is lagging behind, slow and continuous. Take the copper market as an example. It took five months for the RMB to appreciate against the US dollar, and the price comparison between domestic and foreign copper markets began to show. It is believed that on the one hand, this is due to the wait-and-see mentality of traders caused by exchange rate fluctuations, and on the other hand, the imported inflation caused by the influx of "hot money" masks the actual price change of the two markets, because this imported inflation can push up the domestic copper price, thus slowing down the process and speed of the price decline of domestic and foreign copper markets to some extent.
In fact, during this period, the RMB not only completed a wave of depreciation against the US dollar in a few days, but also continued to appreciate against the US dollar in the next six months. So it seems that there is no correlation between the two, just because the exchange rate fell after half a year of appreciation, which made the import cost increase rapidly and suppressed the import profit margin. Therefore, from the perspective of exchange rate parity theory, we can prove the influence of exchange rate changes on import price parity and even import profits, but this influence is lagging behind because of the existence of international "hot money".