Buy producers not their commodities

Article Excerpt

Various plausible arguments can be made in favour of investing in physical commodities or their listed producers. However, the practical problems associated with directly holding commodities make the debate almost irrelevant. Holding a well-diversified basket of publicly-listed producers provides investors with a reasonable alternative. It’s almost impossible to invest directly in commodities due to the costs involved with their storage. Think about storing oil and grains. Various ETFs, on the other hand, offer exposure via futures or other derivative instruments, but they generally provide poor returns. Some of the most heavily traded commodities are soybeans, crude oil, copper and gold. Each has unique supply, demand and pricing characteristics. Commodity producers are heavily influenced by the price movement of the commodities that they produce. In addition, unique company-specific factors such as production costs, operational disruptions, taxes, and capital expenditures influence the profitability and stock prices of the producers. Investors can get direct exposure to precious metals by either holding the producers of those commodities…