This paper provides a reasonably comprehensive tour of the always dynamic and frequently opaque commodity markets, including views on (1) commodity trading strategies, (2) common mistakes, and (3) two famous debacles. The specific types of commodity trading strategies that are included are...

This paper discusses inferring crude-oil-market fundamentals through price-relationship data, largely through the perspective of a commodity futures trader. In doing so, the paper briefly covers (1) the promise of big data; (2) the reality of data “black holes”; (3) the wealth of futures...

This paper will cover investing in commodities through futures contracts. It will note the unique sources of risk and return for such investments. We will also discuss the factors that one should take into consideration before deciding upon how much of their portfolio should be in commodities....

The focus of this paper will be on risk management within the context of a total-return futures program centered on commodities. The following issues will be addressed: the evaluation of normal versus eventful risk; the sizing of trades and strategy buckets; and the construction of a portfolio,...

Managed futures strategies are a niche-within-a-niche in the capital markets. Despite this status, managed futures have become of particular interest to hedge fund investors. This paper will discuss why this has become the case by focusing on this strategy's unique diversification properties. We...

In this paper, we note how a set of active commodity strategies could potentially add value to an investor's commodity allocation. But we also emphasize the due care that must be taken in both risk management and implementation discipline

The impact of indexing is exceptionally well documented in the equity markets. The same has not yet been the case for the commodity markets. Our empirical results suggest that one should see increased price-pressure effects in the commodity markets with any increase in the popularity of...

This brief paper discusses the option-like exposures of a number of hedge fund strategies based on a review of the literature on the topic. Specifically, recent academic articles have argued that implicit options arise in hedge fund products due to the following factors: (1) the tailoring of...

This article provides a step-by-step primer on how to design a commodity futures trading program. A prospective commodity manager must not only discover trading strategies that are expected to be generally profitable, but must also be careful regarding each strategy's correlation properties...