ETF Update
Let's take another look at whether agricultural commodities, as measured by PowerShares DB Agriculture FundDBA could be a better stock-market hedge than gold, StreetTRACKS Gold TrustGLD. What's different now? The S&P 500 has entered a bear market, and commodities of all sorts have skyrocketed (but, of course, have corrected aggressively in the last couple of weeks). From the date of that article -- August -- GLD outperformed for a while; then, DBA was the better performer. The net result was a tie. In that time, DBA has had a slightly lower correlation, 0.098, to SPX than GLD, 0.183. The fact is, either one would have been a great hold as stocks were rolling over. As awareness of commodities has grown and new products have made them accessible in brokerage accounts, a mania of some sort has ensued. There was plenty of commentary and sentiment urging more commodity exposure. This makes some sense, as there is a compelling case that demand for commodities has been increasing, while stocks have been faltering.
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See who made what calls.
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