Ben Carlson, Columnist

Commodities Are Good for Traders, Bad for Investors

These assets are in the midst of a prolonged drawdown.

July 24, 2017 at 10:00 AM UTC

Ben Carlson is director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management. He is the author of "Organizational Alpha: How to Add Value in Institutional Asset Management."

Cyclical returns.
Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

Investing in commodities is tough. Things are so tough, in fact, that many commodities traders are fleeing the business altogether.

The recent performance of these hard assets shows why this is the case. While U.S. stocks are up for almost nine years in a row, commodities are in the midst of a prolonged drawdown. A broad basket of commodities, as measured by the Bloomberg Commodities Index, is down around 5 percent this year. Although they were up double digits last year, commodities fell five years in a row from 2011 to 2015.