Time for our monthly look at how the long only commodity ETFs are performing versus simply holding the December futures contract and rolling annually…

This month was brutal for most of the commodities markets… certainly a month in which it would have been nice to be on the short side of these trades. Even so, your losses would have been smaller in futures contracts than in ETFs in the markets we track.

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. We’ve yet to receive a good answer to the question: why invest in an ETF when you can just roll December contracts annually?

Read ‘em and weep…