An in-depth analysis of the new Rogers Van Eck Hard Assets Producers Index.

With oil at $130/barrel and gold at $850/ounce, commodities have gone mainstream.

Commodity-producing companies like Exxon and BHP Billiton play an increasingly important role in the global economy, and commodities - in various guises - play an increasingly important role in investors’ portfolios.

Index providers and exchange-traded fund developers have jumped on the trend. Thanks to the ETF revolution, you can now choose from eight flavors of broad, index-based commodities futures ETFs, linked to indexes like the S&P GSCI, DJ-AIG and UBS CMCI. That’s on top of any number of ETFs covering microcosms of the commodities world - water, solar energy, traditional energy, agriculture, gold, etc.

Against this backdrop, Jim Rogers, Van Eck and S-Network indexes have launched a new commodities index this week: the Rogers Van Eck Hard Asset Producers Liquid Index (RVE for short.)

Why does the world need yet another index? We asked Jan Van Eck, executive vice president of Van Eck Global. “There’s been a lack of a good benchmark for commodity equities,” he claims.

LINK TO FULL ARTICLE: hardassetsinvestor.com

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