Over six and a half years, a BlackRock Inc. commodity fund never came close to $1 billion in assets. Yet over two days in late May, the ETF more than doubled to $2 billion — and it’s already added another $120 million in June. The iShares GSCI Commodity Dynamic Roll Strategy exchange-traded fund (ticker COMT) is one of many raw-materials products enjoying a boom as investors ride an economic recovery from the coronavirus.
Funds tracking specific sectors including energy, industrials and precious metals have long experienced hot money flows like this. Now demand for broad-based commodity funds is surging to an unprecedented degree this year amid the global economic re-opening, with $7.3 billion of allocations to take assets to $17 billion overall.
“People are seeing that commodities are waking up, and ETFs are a popular way to get exposure to them for those who don’t have direct access to, say, the futures market,” said Eric Balchunas, ETF analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. “This year, we’ve seen a lot of previous laggards finally show up” in the ETF market, he said.
Read more/Source: Bloomberg
