Commodity investment goes back to fundamentals

The past year has not been a good one for commodity investment. Passive commodity indexes have delivered disappointing returns, while a number of high-profile commodity hedge funds have been forced to close. What is the outlook for investor interest in commodities? Gillian Carr reports

It's been a tough year for commodity investment. The broad gains in commodity markets seen during recent years – dubbed the commodity 'super cycle' – seem to have come to an end, and investors have been left holding the bag. Strategies that produced results during the boom years have increasingly failed to find the same returns, and market participants say the mood of investors towards commodities has noticeably changed. Funds have been pulled from many passive commodity investment products