In the FT recently, there was an article on how rare earth metals have doubled in just three weeks amid heavy stockpiling in China.

A trend in the market place has been the movement of investment funds out of traditional financial instruments such as shares and bonds, into other asset classes such as commodities like metals and natural resources. Today Legal and General the UK’s largest institutional investor owning about 5% of the UK Stock Market

[http://www.lgim.com/about-us/]

They have launched a new fund, that is focussed on Environmental Enterprises:

[http://i.legalandgeneral.com/consumer/investments/products-and-funds/specialist/investments-productsandfunds-activelymanaged-other-fund-globalenvironmentalenterprises.jsp]

Another fund is the JP Morgan Natural Resources Fund:
[http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/funds/snapshot/snapshot.aspx?id=F0GBR04S4X]

Also M&G (the Fund Management company of Prudential) have a fund called Global Basics:[http://www.mandg.co.uk/Consumer/FundInfo/FundsAtoZ/OEICFunds/GlobalBasicsFund/]

Perhaps when interest rates are near zero, then investors are looking at more sophisticated assets to find a better return, such as natural resources to diversify the asset base, or if you are pension fund manager, that has monthly obligations, getting an income from having investments in natural resources, or getting the generous dividend from BHP Biliton are really vital.