Today's commodity index, only the CRB index is recognized by the United States. In fact, international funds regard him more as the basis for the future trend of commodity prices. If the index rises, it indicates that commodity futures will continue to strengthen. Buy crude oil, metals, precious metals or agricultural futures. China only has commodity futures, which is already the riskiest speculative industry in China, and there is no commodity index.

Indexed investment in commodity market first appeared in 1980s, in the form of commodity index futures. From 65438 to 0986, the New York Futures Exchange listed the CRB index futures contract, becoming the first indexed investment product in the commodity market. Subsequently, S&P Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (SPGSCI) and Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index (DJ-UBSCI) followed closely. According to the statistics of Barclays Bank, in 2002, the funds invested by index funds in commodities were only $9 billion, reaching $200 billion by 20 10.

Commodity index fund is an investment fund based on a commodity index in the market, which builds a basket of commodities through replication and tracks the changes of the index. Commodity index funds do not use short selling strategy or leverage, that is, they construct futures contract portfolio according to the nominal value of futures contracts. Because they don't participate in physical delivery, commodity index funds usually don't buy contracts that expire near the month. Therefore, the expected annualized expected return of commodity index funds mainly comes from the rise of commodity prices.

Commodity index ETF(Exchange-TradedFund) obtains the expected annualized expected return similar to the benchmark index by tracking the commodity index, and eliminates the deviation between the net value and the transaction price through the arbitrage mechanism of ETF primary market and secondary market. ETF is more popular with retail investors because of its low threshold and convenient transaction.

Commodity index funds have three functions:

First, it can be directly used as a tool for investment profit and asset allocation.

Second, it helps to spread the risks of bonds, stocks and other investments.

Third, as a hedge against inflation.