SummerHaven Index Management Enters Into License Agreement with Fund Sponsor United States Commodity Funds for SummerHaven Copper Index

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Nov 12, 2010, 07:30 ET

STAMFORD, Conn., Nov. 12, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- SummerHaven Index Management, LLC, announces that it has entered into an agreement through an affiliate to license the SummerHaven Copper Index (SCI) to United States Commodity Funds, LLC, the operator of a family of commodity-based exchange traded investment funds that track investments in oil, natural gas, and other physical commodities.

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The SCI seeks to minimize contango and maximize backwardation through selection of copper futures contracts each month. The SCI selects COMEX High Grade Copper futures contracts with maturities of 18-months or less and maintains positions in liquid portions of the copper futures curve.

SummerHaven developed the SCI and adds this new copper benchmark to its family of dynamic commodity indexes: the SummerHaven Dynamic Commodity Index (SDCI), the SummerHaven Dynamic Metals Index (SDMI) and the SummerHaven Dynamic Agriculture Index (SDAI). The SDCI is calculated and published by Bloomberg and is the investment benchmark for the United States Commodity Index Fund (NYSE Arca ticker "USCI"), an exchange traded commodity fund.

The First Dynamic Copper Index

This new copper futures index is designed as a benchmark for investors seeking attractive risk-adjusted copper returns. Traditional commodity indexes tend to weight 100% to the nearest-to-maturity contract without consideration of changing market dynamics. Through use of fundamental signals about the underlying physical copper market, the SCI weights its composition to closer-to-maturity contracts in backwardated markets and shifts to longer duration contracts when markets are in contango.

SummerHaven Partner and index researcher Adam Dunsby, PhD, commented, "We believe based on our research that a properly constructed single-commodity index, one that dynamically adjusts its weightings along the investable futures curve, can produce results over time that exceed the results from a traditional static index while displaying the same, or less, volatility. Such results should be of interest to investors."

John T. Hyland, CFA, the Chief Investment Officer of United States Commodity Funds, commented, "Copper is one of the most important commodities in the world and we are excited to license an index that addresses important issues of storage, contango and backwardation in the copper market while providing returns that are consistent with the performance of copper prices. We are major supporters of advanced '3rd Generation' commodity indexes and we believe that Professor K. Geert Rouwenhorst and the team at SummerHaven Index Management have devised a very sound and fundamental approach to copper investing. We believe that it will offer investors in the future a very interesting alternative to investing in physical copper and paying storage costs."

Kurt J. Nelson, Partner at SummerHaven, states, "Investor interest in copper has increased recently, and SummerHaven is excited to license our new copper index to United States Commodity Funds. Physical copper storage costs have averaged more than 3% per year over the last decade, and copper futures investors can at least partially avoid these costs when the futures market is backwardated. In addition, physical copper investors don't earn interest on their physical investment, and the SCI includes full cash collateral return through the 90-day U.S. Treasury Bill rate."

About SummerHaven Index Management

Headquartered in Stamford, CT, SummerHaven Index Management is focused on creating innovative commodity indices. The firm is led by a seasoned management team with over 50 years of collective financial markets experience with commodity futures, capital markets, investment management, and exchange traded products. The first commodity index created by SummerHaven, the SummerHaven Dynamic Commodity Index, is published daily by Bloomberg under the ticker SDCITR.