Brad Zigler

JP Morgan and BNP Paribas' Commodity Indexes: Smart Weapons for the Contango War

The reason you can't find anything for the symbol CMRI is because the index hasn't been licensed for an exchange-traded product. There's nothing to "get in" yet.

About research ...

Some index manufacturers don't seem to have a keen understanding of the needs of investors. For the investment banks with cadres of sales/traders, the thinking is "This is a proprietary product. We'll use our people to sell it to our clients."

If the products are licensed for ETFs or ETNs, though, they leave a whole new market untapped: sophsiticated investors and their advisors.

Since the reveal of their new indexes, BNP Paribas and JPMorgan have left the benchmarks to twist in the wind. There is no space devoted on either of the banks' Web sites to explaining the methodology, benefits or components of the indexes.

We're following this on Hard Assets Investor (HardAssetsInvestor.com) starting with an article entitled "New Commodity Indexes: They're Just Teasing Us."