Spotted over at Paul Kedrosky’s blog earlier today was this chart from Finviz (no link, apparently) showing the year-to-date performance of various asset classes. Don’t get too excited about hogs and cattle (as Paul did) as a wicked contango persists in these markets that is killing investors, the iPath DJ-UBS Livestock TR Sub-Idx ETN (NYSE:COW) now up a whopping one percent for the year despite what you see directly below.
Practically speaking, the trade-weighted dollar and gold are battling it out at the top while the only equities still in positive territory for the year are the small cap Russell 2000 stocks with gains of 1.0 percent, but, down 1.08 percent today, they too should be painted red. Bringing up the rear are a host of agricultural goods that Jim Rogers and a few others have been recommending for the better part of a year now, but they just keep going down.
![[Most Recent USD from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/indexes/idx24_usd_en_2.gif)
I think this illustrates why you should be wary of anyone touting the pros or cons of “commodities”, as if they are a monolithic entity. Like subclasses of other assets, they can be good or bad at given times.
http://finviz.com/futures_performance.ashx?v=17
I use this site daily . Very helpful ! Above find URL to data in above . also interactive as seen on site page upper task bar
Hope this helps
One caveat is that the chart is a US$ centric view, thus assuming that an investor would mark to market everything in US$ terms. Someone in the Euro zone who bought corn futures as an investment would have seen a static return in Euro terms. FWIW.