Conquering Misperceptions about Commodity Futures Investing

Long-only commodity futures returns have been very disappointing over the last decade, leading some to wonder if it was a mistake to invest in commodities. The poor performance is the result of poor “income returns” and not of falling commodity prices. This observation may be surprising for many commodity investors who were not aware, who misperceived, they were making a bet on income returns, a return building block similar to a stock's dividend yield or a bond's yield. For investors seeking an inflation hedge, it may be surprising that the historical linkage of commodity returns with inflation seems to be the result of a connection between commodity income returns and inflation, not, as commonly misperceived, commodity price returns and inflation. It may be surprising that the value of commodity investments is smaller than the market capitalization of Facebook, a potentially striking misperception for investors seeking a portfolio diversifier with abundant capacity. There has been no change in the way that price returns and income returns drive the total returns of stocks, bond and commodities. What has changed is that maybe a good number of commodity investors now realize that they were operating outside of their “circle of competence” and did not have a sense of what future price and income returns could be and would be.See our earlier papers on commodity investing:The Strategic and Tactical Value of Commodity Futures - 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=650923' http://ssrn.com/abstract=650923.The Golden Dilemma - 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=2078535' http://ssrn.com/abstract=2078535.The Golden Constant - 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=2639284' http://ssrn.com/abstract=2639284.An Impressionistic View of the ‘Real' Price of Gold Around the World - 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=2148691' http://ssrn.com/abstract=2148691