BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP): Good Investment?

Is it a good time to invest in BHP Billiton?

BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP) is one of the most diversified and largest of all commodity companies, as most people know. The question now is, is it a good time to invest in BHP Billiton or should you wait?

As of this writing, BHP Billiton has a market cap well over $200 billion, and operations on six continents.

To make a decision as simple as possible, as you can wear yourself out trying to trace every aspect of this company, especially when commodity prices can be strongly effected by geo-political circumstances. And when you have a company as large and diversified as BHP Billiton, they can be booming in one part of the world and getting hammered in another part.

So with that in mind, it's better, as far as it relates to BHP, to solely base your decision on supply and demand, and how the company is weighted during this season of time.

And when talking of supply and demand, we're largely talking primarily about China, and secondarily about India. As China and India go, that's how demand will go on a macro-economic scale.

Even if China tightens their capital markets, they are still expected to grow at an eight to nine percent rate. Still huge by any measurement you use.

Another key element in investing in BHP Billington will be the actions of major central banks around the world concerning interest rates.

If you think interest rates will go up soon, it could be a bad time to invest in a company like BHP, but if you think they'll stay low for some time, then investing now could reap some nice returns.

BHP is still close to 20 percent below its highs in 2008, so there is room to move up for them.

Even in these extremely volatile times, supply and demand will eventually win out on investing in commodities, and even though temporary events can cause huge fluctuations, that should be the deciding factor for investing in any commodity company. Otherwise there are too many variables to consider that can really be made sense of in a cohesive way which can lead to an informed decision.