Vista Basket Beats

Here is the performance of the major commodity indexes since the Vista basket 4/30/2009 inception to the quarter ending 3/28/2024:

Normalized to 1000 = 4/30/2009

Continuously Compounded Returns

Vista = Vista Commodity Basket

BCOM = Bloomberg Excess Return Commodity Index

GSCI = S&P GSCI Excess Return Commodity Index

Sources: barchart.com, bloomberg.com, spglobal.com

Vista since inception is up roughly 50% while diversified nearby month BCOM and energy weighted GSCI recovered from a 50% decline and are roughly unchanged.

The Vista basket of fully collateralized long dated commodity futures contracts beats normalized AND 4 out of 5 rolling periods. What does this mean? 

Wild speculation, despite recent rallies, has been driven OUT of commodities. Commodities are now back in the realm of hedgers and trade by necessity rather than trade by choice. The specs are now in the domain of crypto and meme stocks where they belong. 

This is a good thing for commodities! Commodities are necessities of modern life and rational markets are welcome. If commods ARE rational, the friction of continuous rolls of expiring contracts may account for the higher returns of the long dated, single roll per year Vista basket. 

Why BCOM and GSCI? While there may be hundreds of published commodity indexes, these are the "headline" or benchmark commodity indexes. Why excess return indexes? Excess return flavors are pure commodity futures price indexes and therefor comparable to the Vista Basket. "Total Return" indexes include the returns of T-Bills presumed to be used for collateral in futures accounts. The Vista Basket is fully collateralized and TBill gains are not included in the basket calculation.