There has clearly been a noted global rally in most commodities in the early going in 2014, with Precious Metals like Gold and Silver for example rising markedly this year from where they were at the tail end of 2013.
Fuel/Energy commodities such as Natural Gas, Crude Oil, and Gasoline have also vaulted higher recently, as well as the most esoteric of individual agricultural commodities for example (see a chart of JO (iPath DJ-UBS Coffee ETN, Expense Ratio 0.75%) or NIB (iPath DJ-UBS Cocoa Subindex Total Return ETN, Expense Ratio 0.75%)) and today we revisit a niche ETF that we have covered in this column in the past albeit not recently.
CORN (Teucrium Corn Fund, Expense Ratio 1.00%) which is structured as an ETF, not an ETN, remains the go to play for long exposure to corn futures via an exchange traded product, and has seen a nice uptick in trading volume recently.
The fund has pulled in a notable $31 million of fresh new assets thus far in 2014, and although it is lagging other agricultural products in the short term, to some degree it has bounced off of its recent lows registered in mid -January of this year. CORN now has about $78 million in assets under management, and over time has had much more than this in terms of overall assets, which ebb and flow at times dependent on the price of Corn itself it
seems.
For now, it seems that commodity experienced and oriented institutional asset managers which may trade with a directional bias are attracted to CORN as means of having long exposure to Corn futures, as we see top institutional holders based on 13F Filings include Summit Capital Management LLC and Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. Ltd. for example.