Question: How is the palm oil industry going to perform in 2018? I believe there are two different approaches to answering the question above. Firstly, for most, the follow-up question is: “Where would the price of crude palm oil be in the next 6-12 months?” A higher crude palm oil price would see palm oil companies benefiting from higher sales. This seems logical but this view is short-term and involves speculating on an event (a rise in crude palm oil prices) which may or may not happen in the near future. Secondly, for savvy investors, their focus is not on the short-term price movements of crude palm oil. Rather, they would ask: “Is this palm oil company able to make sustainable profits whether crude palm oil prices are high or low?” With that perspective, the objective becomes finding companies that are able to generate consistent returns in the ......