Commodities are scarce or might become scarce. Scarcity is a property shared across commodities which make a good addition to your portfolio. The source of uncorrelated returns with the rest of the asset classes like Equities and Bonds make commodities a must-have in a diversified portfolio.
There are lots of commodities and some are more common than others like timber, copper, live cattle, gold, palm oil, diamonds, barley, cotton, sugar, soybeans, silver, natural gas, coffee, (Bitcoin?!)... You can gain exposure in commodities in lots of ways, the bigger your portfolio, the more options you have.
For instance, if you believe gold is a good addition because of its intrinsic properties like scarcity, store of value, good inflation protection, then you can do 3 things to get exposure to gold:
Buy physical gold, for instance here
Buy an ETF that tracks gold, for instance the "SPDR Gold Trust"
Buy a company that mines gold, for instance "Barrick Gold (NYSE ticker: GOLD)"
Buy a derivative contract on gold, for instance gold futures, gold options, gold warrants.
In short, the above ideas might well apply for the most known commodity types although not all commodities are as easily accessible as gold. There are many studies that prove that over the medium to long term, commodities are a good return-diversifier rather than return-enhancer. So you might think of adding them in a proportion that suits your understanding and specific objectives and constraints.
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