Commodity exchange traded funds have enjoyed greater investment interest this year as a recovery in oil prices and resurgence in safe-haven gold bets helped attract steady inflows.
Investors threw more than $50 billion into commodities this year, the best start to a year since 2009 when commodity assets were at the start of a three-year boom, the Financial Times reports.
The new money, along with rising prices, have helped raise commodity assets under management to $235 billion, up from a low of $161 billion at the end of 2015.
According to BlackRock data, commodities-related exchange traded products attracted $27.7 billion in net inflows over the first six months of the year, compared to the $7.7 billion in net inflows for the same period last year and the total $12.0 billion in inflows for all of 2015.
The SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD), which tracks a basket of physical gold bullion, has been the most popular ETF play of the year, attracting $13.2 billion in net inflows, according to ETF.com.
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