One of the world’s best known benchmarks of the commodity futures market has been redesigned and renamed, effective July 12, 2005. This will focus investors towards the energy bull market and
away from precious metals to some degree. I wonder what this will do to the speculative price of oil.
CRB Index Revised Commodity Research Bureau
http://www.crbtrader.com/
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he most obvious change to the CRB will be the addition of three new commodities (and the elimination of one existing one) for a net gain of two components. The famous CRB 17 will now be the CRB 19. The traditional equal weighting of the CRB will be thrown out as well, and good riddance to it. In the new CRB crude oil will be weighted as 23x more important than orange juice, a vastly more accurate portrayal of reality than equality has been.
The CRB of the past decade had 17 equally-weighted component commodities, which equals out to 5.9% or so for each individual component. The new CRB’s 19 component commodities are much more intelligently weighted. The biggest by far, and rightfully so, is
crude oil at a massive 23% of the new CRB index. Total petroleum products will now run 33% compared to less than 12% in the current CRB.
Crude oil is absolutely the King of Commodities today. It forms the foundation of our extensive global trade and hence the entire world economy. Virtually everything we consume in the first world is transported via oil-powered ships, trains, airplanes, and trucks. Without oil, the incredibly intricate global logistics network on which we so heavily rely today would grind to a halt. We would be thrust back into the Steam Age before flight and global trade would implode. Oil’s supreme importance is unassailable.
The new CRB brings back unleaded gasoline as well, a great decision. Unleaded gas was originally inducted into the CRB in the 1992 revision and then inexplicably booted in the 1995 revision. Yet gas is the crude oil distillate that most affects first-world consumers. Every ride we take consumes gasoline and everything we buy includes a component of gas costs incurred to transport it from where it is produced to where we purchase it. As far as impacting everyday life, no other commodity is so ubiquitous and far reaching.
The new CRB’s
33% weighting for crude oil and its key distillates is also now in line with other commodities indexes. The CRB’s main competitor is the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index, which was running an utterly massive
64% petroleum weighting at the end April. The Dow Jones AIG Commodities Index had 21% exposure to petroleum at the same time. Far more so than today’s paltry sub-12% weighting, the new CRB’s petroleum emphasis captures the essence of today’s world trade and better compares to other leading indexes.
Overall, when natural gas is included, the new CRB’s energy exposure rises 21% to 39% from the existing iteration’s 18% or so.
I have pondered this heavy energy emphasis a lot in recent weeks and continue to conclude that it can only be good. A great index reflects the relative importance of its components in the underlying world economy, and in today’s world nothing else even comes close to having the broad impact of energy.