Prices: one clear regime signal, and a lot of noise.
Twelve commodity prices, eight regimes, six horizons from 3 to 24 months after each onset: – comparisons survive the correction for testing so many. The one that does is palm oil, up in real terms 24 months after – El Niño onsets (median – relative to the same calendar window in other years), the drought reaching the oil a year or more later. Everything else, grains, coffee, cocoa, sugar, gas and coal, moved with policy, energy, currencies, stocks and demand far more than with ENSO. The literature finds real effects, but small ones next to those drivers.
Prices are World Bank Pink Sheet monthly averages deflated with U.S. CPI-U. Each change is ranked against the same calendar window in every year, so a seasonal rise is not mistaken for an ENSO effect. n is the number of onsets, not months. 1972–74, 2007–08 and 2021–22 were price spikes with other causes that overlap ENSO onsets.
After the onset, commodity by commodity
Real price change after each onset in a regime, and 2026 so far
Dots are single onsets (hover for the year); the line is the median. The open diamond is the change since the May 2026 onset: history, not a forecast.
Every commodity, every regime
The moves since the May 2026 onset
not a forecastWhat 2026–28 implies
How price shocks chain into food, fiscal and growth effects: compounding pathways. The forecast view: Fall/winter 2026–27 in context.