MatthewDPX

There is a big difference between investing in companies that produce commodities and commodities themselves. XOM, CVX, BP and the like are companies that are in the business of producing oil to generate profit for their shareholders. Owning XOM/CVX/BP stock is investing, because there's a reasonable expectation that the companies will make money and return that profit to their shareholders in the form of a buyback or a dividend. Owning an actual commodity is like buying art or trading cards speculating your purchase will go up in value based on some inside knowledge you perceive to have. That is the definition of speculation.

So if it's a commodity, it's just speculation. Nobody invests in "corn" or "oil" for retirement.

You're welcome. Email me if you want the full data set. matt [at] mattpaulson [dot] com.

Founder of MarketBeat (website mentioned) here. We do have more than two years of data (more like 7), but profile pages get too large when we publish it all in one shot. We can make the full history available as a giant CSV file if there's a researcher that wants to do a similar analysis over a long period of time.

Mail Monitor will so the first or those two things for you.