The Contrarian Investor: Every fund has its day

CONTRARIAN INVESTOR

At long last it feels like the grim world of managing a commodity fund might become a tiny bit more bearable.

To understand the plight of the poor old professional mining and energy stockpicker, whizz over to a funds data site like www.trustnet.com and hunt down their data on the 44 commodity funds currently in existence within unit trust land, available on most major platforms. Over the past 12 months, of the 41 funds that continue to report numbers, fully half have reported negative numbers for the year, with a staggering 15 reporting a drawdown of 20% or more. Most of the top performers remind us eventually the worm turns, even for the most despised of sectors. The top three slots all belo...