Commodity price index

A commodity price index is a fixed-weight index or (weighted) average of selected commodity prices, which may be based on spot or futures prices. It is designed to be representative of the broad commodity asset class or a specific subset of commodities, such as energy or metals.

The constituents in a commodity price index can be broadly grouped into the following categories:

• Energy
• Metals

• Base Metals
• Precious Metals

• Agriculture

• Grains
• Softs
• Livestock

Investors can choose to obtain a passive exposure to these commodity price indices through a total return swap. The advantages of a passive commodity index exposure include negative correlation with other asset classes such as equities and bonds, as well as protection against inflation. The disadvantages include a negative roll yield due to contango in certain commodities, although this can be reduced by active management techniques, such as reducing the weights of certain constituents (e.g. precious and base metals) in the index.

Indices

• World Bank Commodity Price Index
• Continuous Commodity Index (CCI)
• Astmax Commodity Index(AMCI)
• Commin Commodity Index
• Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index
• Goldman Sachs Commodity Index
• Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index
• Rogers International Commodity Index
• Standard & Poor's Commodity Index
• NCDEX Commodity Index
• Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodity Index (DBLCI)
• Credit Suisse Commodity Benchmark Index (CSCB)
• UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index (CMCI)
• Merrill Lynch Commodity index eXtra (MLCX)

Articles

• Commodity Indexes Overview and Analysis by Rogers Raw Materials
• Research Database of Commodity Price Indices

External links

Commodity price index at the Open Directory Project