Can Commodities Also Fuel Our Investment Portfolios?

Gasoline And Coffee Fuel Our Daily Lives. Can Commodities Also Fuel Our Investment Portfolios? by Bransby Whitton, Klaus Thuerbach and Kate Botting, PIMCO

Commodities are a tangible part of our daily lives. They are the food we eat, the energy that powers our cars and heats our homes, the metals that go into our electrical wiring and our jewelry. Yet investing in commodities can seem elusive.

Unlike stocks and bonds, commodities are physical assets. And for the vast majority of investors, taking delivery of barrels of oil, bushels of wheat and other physical assets is impractical. For centuries, people have used futures markets to solve this problem; the first official exchange with standardized contracts and centralized clearing emerged in...