The recent stellar performance of commodity markets has prompted the separate release of two capital guaranteed commodity products for retail investors, with Macquarie Portfolio Management launching its Macquarie Comets Trust and Alpha Group unveiling its product called Mars.
Macquarie manager, equity markets group, Pia Cooke said Macquarie Comets Trust offered investors returns linked to global commodity and financial futures, including energy, metals, agricultural products, currencies and bonds.
“We’ve seen some pretty impressive price increases in metals, we’ve seen price increases in energy. I think it’s quite topical when investors go to the fuel bowser and see the prices going up, and are looking for ways to try and access commodities,” she said.
Cooke said the Comets Trust employed a dynamic investment strategy linked to the Standard & Poor’s Diversified Trends Indicator (S&P DTI).
The S&P DTI takes long positions on commodities and financial futures whose price is trending upwards, and takes short positions where the price is trending downwards.
Cooke said the S&P DTI took a quantitative approach to decision-making and offered low volatility compared with other methods, around 5.67 per cent since 1991.
Despite the low volatility, Cooke said the product offered capital protection as an extra level of security for retail investors.
The Mars product, released by Alpha Group, a syndicate of financial planners that provides wholesale structured products for self-managed super funds, also offers a capital guarantee to investors.
SavingsFactory chief executive officer Tony Rumble said the capital guarantee was carefully balanced against gearing within the product.
Rumble said the Mars product offered direct investment in commodities, linked in equal dollar amounts to four indices; the Goldman Sachs energy index, the previous metals index, the Goldman Sachs industrial commodities index, and the Dow Jones emerging market index.
“All four of those [indices] were selected in consultation with dealer groups that earlier in the year started to think that, if the Aussie equity market starts to get to a relatively high valuation, US equity markets get to a high valuation, interest rates globally start to pick up, it’s time for more diversity in the portfolio,” he said.
