Scotia Economics Patricia Mohr, photographed at the Scotia Plaza in Toronto.RANDY QUAN/The Globe and Mail
Patricia Mohr, one of Canada's most recognizable experts in commodities and a rational voice in a sector known for hyperbole, is retiring next month after serving 31 years as an economist at Bank of Nova Scotia.
Her career has spanned monumental shifts in the global commodities landscape in recent decades, marked by the rise of China's economy, the development of Canada's oilsands, surging oil and gold prices – and equally dramatic declines.
"Most of the work I do is fundamental in nature. I try to anticipate changing supply and demand conditions," Ms. Mohr said.
"But one of the things that one learns with experience is that sentiment among investment funds and hedge funds is extremely important."
She started her career at Scotiabank in 1985. Two years later, she released the Scotiabank Commodity Price Index – a first for Canada – which is a regular report that combines global economics with outlooks for everything from headline-grabbing gold, copper and oil to lesser-known items such as coking coal, northern bleached softwood and lentils.
Though the commodities themselves remained similar through the years, the conditions affecting prices and production levels changed dramatically, making Ms. Mohr a go-to voice for anyone looking for explanations and forecasts, and earning her the respect of colleagues, competitors and newcomers.
"She was well-known amongst industry players and investors in the natural resources sector," said Jessica Fung, a commodities analyst at BMO Nesbitt Burns. "There are surprisingly few of us in Canada that look across multiple commodities, and she covered both behemoths of energy and metals."
In the 1970s, Japan's resource-dependent economy was a key driver of commodity prices and the Arab oil embargo fanned fears of resource scarcity.
Ms. Mohr's arrival at Scotiabank, though, coincided with the start of a radical shift toward China as the world's biggest source of commodity demand, accelerating after 2001. By 2015, China's consumption of key base metals represented about half of global demand, underlining the economy's importance to commodities produced in Canada and elsewhere.
Within this overarching trend, though, commodities remained prone to cyclical swings.
"Every business cycle is different, in terms of the factors moving prices up and moving them down again," Ms. Mohr said.
However, the cycles are typically defined by five years of strong commodity prices related to a previous slowdown in capital investment, followed by a correction.
The huge slide in commodity prices since 2011, she believes, has been driven by lacklustre economic growth among developed economies, with China and other emerging markets failing to offer much support.
But Ms. Mohr, whose age is a guarded secret, is retiring an optimist: "Because commodities have been moving down, irregularly, since spring 2011, we now have a situation where we're getting a big reduction in global capacity expansion in hard-rock mining and, of course, oil and gas."
"And that's going to set the stage for quite a strong pickup in commodity prices late this decade and the first five years of the next. So I think you'll see it all coming back," she said.
Ms. Mohr's interest in commodities is lifelong, starting with her upbringing in Vancouver where commodities have long been integral to the economy. She was further influenced at the University of British Columbia, where one of her professors was the famous resource economist Peter Pearse.
Her retirement from Scotiabank on April 1 won't mark the end of her public life: She plans to do some public speaking and wants to serve on boards of directors, in addition to the advisory boards on which she already serves.
"While I'm retiring, I'm still going to be watching the commodities markets quite closely," she said.