Can someone help me out?
Looking to put up to 5% in commodities; preferably agriculture-although I would consider energy,metals, ag if not dominated by energy.I know powershares and other ETFs exist.

Has anyone studied this to know best choices for commodity play? Agriculture per se?
Thanks!

MOO is an ETF that figures prominently in the comments of some very capable people over in the Fidelity Forum...  I will probably pick this one up when an entry point presents itself in next 30 days or so...

Good luck...

Thanks everyone.
FYI: I looked up and did some research on MOO. It is a nice basket of stocks related to commodities; but it has about a .60 (I believe) correlatoin with the general equity market (the dow or something like it; can't recall).
RJA is interesting; and I will look into it, but I heard it was "expensive". I need to investigate.

Try JJA

.75% expense ratio

You can purchase these at elementsetn.com.

 But....I've been looking at the different commodity ETN's for a while now. I find I get stuck on several points:

Roger's elements funds (actually ETN's) are new and so are very thinly traded. For the agricultural one (the one I'm most interested in) the ETN is not dispersed until 2020 (as I recall). So then you have to hope that the ETN becomes large enough to develop a trading market (unless you have $5M in it in which case they are obligated to redeem your units (shares)).

The prospectus assumes it will qualify for long-term capital gain but that does not seem to be the direction the US IRS is heading.

I think I'm most concerned though that the ETN's of Roger's and others are UNSECURED debt!  I'm fine with going long on something and taking a loss; but I'm uncomfortable when I have no guarantee that the financial entity taking my money will be able to pay what is owed to me. Now admittedly one of the larger commodity ETN's (not Roger's) is backed by Barclay's Bank and Roger's Elements products are backed by SEK which the prospectus says is owned by the Swedish State, but still....

 I like Roger's views very much. I do believe agricultural commodities are a worthwhile investment for a number of reasons. It's just difficult to find a good vehicle. I go back and forth between something like MOO or RIJA (if it becomes larger and if I learn more about SEK) or buying calls in the commodities market. I have been hoping for some agricultural commodity investment that would qualify for LT capital gains but I don't think I'm going to find one. The longer term calls require an annual mark-to-market but that still is better tax-wise than the current direction the IRS seems to be heading.

Just my thoughts.

     Don
 

After reading the posts to my question and doing some research, I think DBA (agriculture; four basic future -wheat, soy, corn....) is the best bet. It has a low correlation, very liquid, and solid record.

Rogers etn is expensive and just out of the box.

MOO is a basket of agriculture oriented companies, but has an r-squared of .60: to me it is not a legitimate uncorrelated asset. It might be a good play, but not when one wants an ucorrelated asset.

nantucket9:

After reading the posts to my question and doing some research, I think DBA (agriculture; four basic future -wheat, soy, corn....) is the best bet. It has a low correlation, very liquid, and solid record.

Rogers etn is expensive and just out of the box.

MOO is a basket of agriculture oriented companies, but has an r-squared of .60: to me it is not a legitimate uncorrelated asset. It might be a good play, but not when one wants an ucorrelated asset.

Thank you.  It helps me tremendously when others share their thought processes and logic behind decisions.  When I'm struggling with the same issues it either provides validation or food for thought.

Roberta 

Dkaiser,  thanks for your reply.

I would like funds that invest in a single commodity. Ex: one fund that invest only in cotton, one fund that invest only in soy, one fund that invest only in sugar and so on. But it seems   that funds like I want don't exist.

To play in the commodity future market I suppose is too complicated, the brokerages would ask high values (high money)