It’s time for our monthly look at how the long-only commodity ETFs are performing versus simply holding the December futures contract and rolling annually.

Crude oil took a hit this month, dropping much further into the red for the year, while corn slid only a little and natural gas climbed a couple of percentage points, bringing a long-NG position in the December futures contract almost up to even on the year. In terms of the underperformance between the December futures contract and the ETFs that we track, underperformance narrowed slightly for crude oil, and widened slightly for natural gas and corn.

Futures trading is complicated, presents a risk of loss, and isn’t for everyone – especially since past market performance doesn’t necessarily indicate future results – but given the numbers, we’re left scratching our heads. Ultimately, we prefer a commodities investment strategy that can benefit from both rising and falling prices (like managed futures). But if you’re going to adopt a long-only strategy… we’ve yet to receive a good answer to the question: why invest in an ETF when you can just roll December futures contracts annually?

Read ‘em and weep:

Disclaimer: past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.