Gold vs. Ag: Quest for the Best Hedge

Let's take another look at whether agricultural commodities, as measured by PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund(DBA Quote) could be a better stock-market hedge than gold, StreetTRACKS Gold Trust(GLD Quote).

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. ...