Refinitiv Equal Weight Commodity Index

Last updated

The Refinitiv Equal Weight Commodity Index (formerly known as the Continuous Commodity Index) is a major US barometer of commodity prices. The index comprises 17 commodity futures that are continuously rebalanced: cocoa, coffee, copper, corn, cotton, crude oil, gold, heating oil, live cattle, live hogs, natural gas, orange juice, platinum, silver, soybeans, Sugar No. 11, and wheat.

Contents

History

Continuous Commodity Index 1956-2012 Continuous Commodity Index.png
Continuous Commodity Index 1956–2012

The CCI stems from the original CRB Index, created in 1957. It is a ‘snapshot’ of the index at its 9th revision in 1995, before it underwent weighting and rebalance changes in the 10th revision. It is sometimes referred to as the ‘Old CRB’.

The 17 components of the CCI are continuously rebalanced to maintain the equal weight of 5.88%. Since CCI components are equally weighted, they therefore distribute evenly into the major sectors: Energy 17.65%, Metals 23.53%, Softs 29.41% and Agriculture 29.41%. While other commodity indices may overweight in certain sectors (e.g. Energy), the CCI provides exposure to all four commodity subgroups.

The Refinitiv Equal Weight Commodity Index is published real time and is widely disseminated to subscribers including traders, analysts, consultants and media outlets. It is licensed for the creation of over-the-counter products by Refinitiv.

Greenhaven Funds developed a fund that tracks the CCI, called the Greenhaven Continuous Commodity Index Fund (GCC) and now renamed as WisdomTree Continuous Commodity Index Fund.

Discontinuation

Refinitiv discontinued calculation of the Refinitiv Equal Weight Commodity Index on 29 Jan 2021.

As a result of the discontinuation, Wisdomtree modified their ETF strategy considerably in December 2020: [1]

See also

Footnotes

  1. "Introducing the New WisdomTree Enhanced Commodity Strategy Fund | WisdomTree".

Related Research Articles

Commodity market Physical or virtual transactions of buying and selling involving raw or primary commodities

A commodity market is a market that trades in the primary economic sector rather than manufactured products, such as cocoa, fruit and sugar. Hard commodities are mined, such as gold and oil. Futures contracts are the oldest way of investing in commodities. Commodity markets can include physical trading and derivatives trading using spot prices, forwards, futures, and options on futures. Farmers have used a simple form of derivative trading in the commodity market for centuries for price risk management.

An index fund is a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) designed to follow certain preset rules so that the fund can track a specified basket of underlying investments. While index providers often emphasize that they are for-profit organizations, index providers have the ability to act as "reluctant regulators" when determining which companies are suitable for an index. Those rules may include tracking prominent indexes like the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average or implementation rules, such as tax-management, tracking error minimization, large block trading or patient/flexible trading strategies that allow for greater tracking error but lower market impact costs. Index funds may also have rules that screen for social and sustainable criteria.

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a type of investment fund and exchange-traded product, i.e. they are traded on stock exchanges. ETFs are similar in many ways to mutual funds, except that ETFs are bought and sold from other owners throughout the day on stock exchanges while mutual funds are bought and sold from the issuer based on their price at day's end. An ETF holds assets such as stocks, bonds, currencies, cryptocurrencies, and/or commodities such as gold bars, and generally operates with an arbitrage mechanism designed to keep it trading close to its net asset value, although deviations can occasionally occur. Most ETFs are index funds: that is, they hold the same securities in the same proportions as a certain stock market index or bond market index. The most popular ETFs in the U.S. replicate the S&P 500 Index, the total market index, the NASDAQ-100 index, the price of gold, the "growth" stocks in the Russell 1000 Index, or the index of the largest technology companies. With the exception of non-transparent actively managed ETFs, in most cases, the list of stocks that each ETF owns, as well as their weightings, is posted daily on the website of the issuer. The largest ETFs have annual fees of 0.03% of the amount invested, or even lower, although specialty ETFs can have annual fees well in excess of 1% of the amount invested. These fees are paid to the ETF issuer out of dividends received from the underlying holdings or from selling assets.

A commodity price index is a fixed-weight index or (weighted) average of selected commodity prices, which may be based on spot or futures prices. It is designed to be representative of the broad commodity asset class or a specific subset of commodities, such as energy or metals. It is an index that tracks a basket of commodities to measure their performance. These indexes are often traded on exchanges, allowing investors to gain easier access to commodities without having to enter the futures market. The value of these indexes fluctuates based on their underlying commodities, and this value can be traded on an exchange in much the same way as stock index futures.

The Standard & Poor's Commodity Index (SPCI) is a commodity price index that measures the price changes in a cross section of agricultural and industrial commodities with actively traded U.S. futures contracts, stretching across five sectors - Energy, Metals, Grains, Livestock, and Fibers & Softs. Only commodities that are consumed for industrial use are included in the index. Weights in the index are determined by the dollar value of Commercial Open Interest (COI) for each component commodity, and rebalanced annually each February.

The S&P GSCI serves as a benchmark for investment in the commodity markets and as a measure of commodity performance over time. It is a tradable index that is readily available to market participants of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The index was originally developed in 1991, by Goldman Sachs. In 2007, ownership transferred to Standard & Poor's, who currently own and publish it. Futures of the S&P GSCI use a multiple of 250. The index contains a much higher exposure to energy than other commodity price indices such as the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index.

The Bloomberg Commodity Index (BCOM) is a broadly diversified commodity price index distributed by Bloomberg Indexes. The index was originally launched in 1998 as the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index (DJ-AIGCI) and renamed to Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index (DJ-UBSCI) in 2009, when UBS acquired the index from AIG. On July 1, 2014, the index was rebranded under its current name.

Refinitiv/CoreCommodity CRB Index

The Refinitiv/CoreCommodity CRB Index is a commodity futures price index. It was first calculated by Commodity Research Bureau, Inc. in 1957 and made its inaugural appearance in the 1958 CRB Commodity Year Book.

United States Consumer Price Index Statistics of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

The United States Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a set of consumer price indices calculated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). To be precise, the BLS routinely computes many different CPIs that are used for different purposes. Each is a time series measure of the price of consumer goods and services. The BLS publishes the CPI monthly.

Bond market index

A bond index or bond market index is a method of measuring the investment performance and characteristics of the bond market. There are numerous indices of differing construction that are designed to measure the aggregate bond market and its various sectors A bond index is computed from the change in market prices and, in the case of a total return index, the interest payments, associated with selected bonds over a specified period of time. Bond indices are used by investors and portfolio managers as a benchmark against which to measure the performance of actively managed bond portfolios, which attempt to outperform the index, and passively managed bond portfolios, that are designed to match the performance of the index. Bond indices are also used in determining the compensation of those who manage bond portfolios on a performance-fee basis.

The Rogers International Commodity Index (RICI) is a broad index of commodity futures designed by Jim Rogers in 1996/1997. The first fund tracking the index began on July 31, 1998.

The S&P/ASX 300, or simply, ASX 300, is a stock market index of Australian stocks listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). The index is market-capitalisation weighted, meaning each company included is in proportion to the indexes total market value, and float-adjusted, meaning the index only considers shares available to public investors.

The Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodity Index (DBLCI) was launched in February 2003. It tracks the performance of six commodities in the energy, precious metals, industrial metals and grain sectors. The DBLCI has constant weightings for each of the six commodities and the index is rebalanced annually in the first week of November. Consequently, the weights fluctuate during the year according to the price movement of the underlying commodity futures.

In May 2006, Deutsche Bank launched a new set of commodity index products called the Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodities Indices Optimum Yield, or DBLCI-OY. The DBLCI-OY indices are available for 24 commodities drawn from the energy, precious metals, industrial metals, agricultural and livestock sectors. A DBLCI-OY index based on the DBLCI benchmark weights is also available and the optimum yield technology has also been applied to the energy, precious metals, industrial metals and agricultural sector indices. Like the DBLCI, the DBLCI-OY is available in USD, EUR, GBP and JPY on a hedged and un-hedge basis. The DBLCI-OY is rebalanced on the fifth index business day of November when each commodity is adjusted to its base weight. The DBLCI-OY is also listed as an exchange-traded fund (ETF) on the American Stock Exchange.

The DBLCI Mean Reversion Index is a commodity index published by the Deutsche Bank. Launched at the same time as the Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodity Index (DBLCI) in February 2003, the DBLCI-Mean Reversion has the same underlying assets. The listed instruments are also rolled using the same mechanism as the DBLCI, namely energy contracts are rolled monthly and the metal and grain contracts are rolled annually. This occurs between the second and sixth business day of the month. The DBLCI-MR is also quoted in both total returns and excess returns terms in US dollars as well as EUR, JPY and GBP.

Stock market index Financial metric which investors use to determine market performance

In finance, a stock index, or stock market index, is an index that measures a stock market, or a subset of the stock market, that helps investors compare current price levels with past prices to calculate market performance. It is computed from the prices of selected stocks.

Refinitiv Indices is a line of indices and index services from Refinitiv:

A commodity index fund is a fund whose assets are invested in financial instruments based on or linked to a commodity price index. In just about every case the index is in fact a commodity futures index.