What’s next for commodities, after the harrowing 2015,

Commodities are suffering from their worst year since 2008. Industrial commodities, in particular, are seeing outsize losses, but it isn’t going to be all gloom and doom for the sector in the new year.

Except for oil, no commodities sector has been beat down as much as the industrial and precious metals.

The Bloomberg Commodity Index BCOM, -0.68% a broadly diversified commodity-price index, has fallen more than 26% in 2015. It is headed for its fifth straight losing year and its worst yearly drop since 2008. The index stands around its lowest level since 1999.

With the pivot in development policy in China to growing consumption rather than expanding investment, demand for key commodities…has disappointed apparent producer expectations, the stronger greenback contributed even more pressure to U.S. dollar-based commodities as a result, metals, mining and energy stocks also got slammed as prices for many industrial commodities dropped to multiyear lows.

Still, prices for these commodities have become so low that they may prompt some buyers to stockpile them for future use.

The global editorial director of metals, summed up iron-ore prices’ collapse in few words: weaker demand and oversupply. That drew parallels to oil. All this adds up to almost 18 months of downward price pressure on iron ore.

Year to date, both palladium and platinum prices are running just over 30% lower, but acording to analysts at Deutsche Bank, Palladium is one of their preferred metals for next year, as they believe the recovery in Chinese vehicle sales is set to continue, lifting palladium.

Copper and silver, moved lower in sync for much of the year, losing significant value on concerns about Chinese demand and expectations that interest-rate hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve will lead to lower prices for metals in general, including gold.

At the moment the prices are driven by the “classic ‘sell on the rumor, buy on the news’.

Coal, with the serial bankruptcies, in the U.S. coal industry, the outlook on the short-term for coal is downbeat.