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A survey of commodity funds
Monday, February 11, 2008
For anyone thinking about adding some commodities to their investment portfolio in 2008, there is a growing selection from which to choose. Here are the top performers:
Please don't ask me about that MacroMarkets Oil Down fund - I have no idea what's going on with it. It came out as number one, so it's in the top spot. Numbers two and five above, however, I like a lot.
Mutual funds, exchange traded funds, and exchange traded notes based on a commodity indexes are shown below. All of the remaining tables are ordered oldest first, newest last.
The Dow Jones AIG Commodity Index, the basis for both the Pimco PCRCX fund and the iPath DJP ETF, has been the top performing commodity index so far in 2008, though it is not clear how the Pimco fund has outperformed its index by such a wide margin. Bill Gross must be up to something.
Energy funds are shown below. Again, don't ask me about the Macromarkets products. I don't think I want to know how they work.
Note how the "early bird gets the worm" above with the Victoria Bay USO oil ETF and the streetTRACKS GLD gold ETF below.
The streetTRACKS gold ETF beat the iShares IAU gold ETF to market by only a month or so back in late-2004/early-2005, yet GLD has 11 times the net assets and more than 33 times the trading volume.
Of course in the metals, copper and silver are the stories so far in 2008. Copper?? Isn't Dr. Copper supposed to be predicting the future of the global economy? Apparently Dr. Copper doesn't read the financial papers, otherwise he (or she) would be be predicting a recession by lowering his price.
Well, actually, agricultural products are the real story so far in 2008 as shown below. All these funds are up double-digits so far except the livestock ETF. Hmmm...
Azuki beans? Yes, they are in Jim Rogers' commodity index along with both bean oil and bean meal.
If anyone knows of any other offerings, please send me mail. I think the above list is complete save for the very old Oppenheimer fund (QRAAX) that has some ridiculously high loads.
To learn more about investing in natural resources using commonly traded ETFs, stocks, and mutual funds, see this description at Iacono Research. Or, sign up for a free trial.
7 comments:
I think it'd be good to include the expense ratios of these funds to the spreadsheet.
Hi Tim, thanks for this. It is very helpful.
Do you, or anyone else, know similar funds that are traded in Canada/Canadian dollars? All of these are USD funds.
I thought about including expenses but ran out of room.
I'm told that the Rogers ETFs trade in Canada and a company called Horizons(?) has commodity funds as well.
Thanks for the tip, Tim. I know the Horizons ETFs: they are leveraged, some of them still illiquid and carry a 1.15% MER.
I actually did not know about the Rogers' RCI trading in Canada: do you know what is the ticker, the name, the provider or any other way I can find this one?
What do you think about COW? Is it a derivative way to play rising agricultural prices?
At the least, I expect Asian demand to lift prices eventually.
tf: I don't know the details, I got this info second hand
mathlete: I'm going to take a closer look at COW this week. I'm not entirely comfortable with ETNs yet, but this product is unique in that it is livestock only.
There are 2 cow:
US: lean hogs and something else;
Canada: Cow.to, Claymore ETF covering fertilizer and agriculture companies.
The Canadian one is very good, I think.
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