While agricultural commodities have been trending lower as of late, they can still offer investors diversification benefits. Teucrium has a pair of funds that offer passive as well as active exposure to ag commodities.
For easy ingress into ag commodities via passive fund, consider the Teucrium Agricultural Fund (TAGS ). It uses a fund-of-funds structure and features a low 0.13% expense ratio. This is beneficial in a time like now, where investors are more cost-conscious.
“Agricultural commodities have a historically low correlation with U.S. equities making TAGS a potentially attractive option for portfolio diversification,” noted Teucrium on the TAGS product website.
As noted, TAGS combines exposure to Teucrium exchange traded funds focused on corn, wheat, soybeans, and sugar. Traders or long-term investors can focus on TAGS for broad-based exposure or the individual funds for a more focused, concentrated approach in specific commodities.
The funds featured in TAGS:
- Teucrium Corn Fund (CORN )
- Teucrium Wheat Fund (WEAT )
- Teucrium Soybean Fund (SOYB )
- Teucrium Sugar Fund (CANE )
Agricultural commodities can provide a portfolio with the diversification it needs to help navigate market uncertainty. Furthermore, the potential for upside is apparent given the long-term performance of the Teucrium Agricultural Fund Benchmark Index. The index is up more than 30% within the last five years. TAGS offers a perfect complement to a traditional 60/40 stock/bond portfolio with uncorrelated assets exposure, all in the convenience of one dynamic ETF.
An Active Option That Minimizes Tax Burden
Agricultural commodities can exhibit high volatility. As such, investors may want to pass the management of an ag commodities portfolio on to an experienced manager. That option is available with the Teucrium Agricultural Strategy No K-1 ETF (TILL ).
The fund provides investors with long-only futures price exposure to corn, wheat, soybeans, and sugar. One difference with TILL is that it does not issue a K-1 tax form, but rather a 1099 form. K-1 forms are typically seen in master limited partnerships and S corporations, which can further add to the complexity at tax time. K-1 forms pass the tax burden on to the investor, so bypassing that process is available with TILL.
The fund will hold one futures contract in each of the four markets (corn, wheat, soybeans, and sugar) excluding the front-month (aka spot) contract. As mentioned, TILL is an actively managed fund, giving investors more dynamic exposure to the markets. The portfolio manager can add or subtract to holdings depending on the current market conditions to allow more flexibility.
For more news, information, and analysis, visit the Commodities Channel.
