Grab the Low-Hanging Fruit
By Yuval Rosenberg

(FORTUNE Magazine) – The bull run on commodities has boosted prices across a broad swath of futures, from precious metals to base metals to agricultural staples to energy. Where should smart investors go looking for gains these days? In the obvious places. "The best thing to do," says commodities bull Jim Rogers, "is to buy the ones that are still down the most."

To find those futures that have lagged, just look at your breakfast table. "Sugar and orange juice and coffee haven't moved very much," Rogers notes. A good coffee crop in Vietnam has pressured coffee prices recently, but prices have already started to perk up and should continue to do so as the global thirst for good java grows.

Among the metals, analysts again point to the names that haven't yet made headlines. While gold just hit a 15-year peak, and speculators have driven up prices of key industrial metals including nickel and copper, metals such as aluminum, lead, and zinc are at much earlier stages in their bull cycles. "Have you been reading about the wonders of the lead market?" asks Peter Hollands of London-based Bloomsbury Minerals Economics. Hollands notes that aluminum and zinc have lagged as well, but the supply crunch for those metals has only just begun. --Y.R.