What Have You Done Lately Department

 We are a month into the new year and here's where we stand:

Ha! GLD - the world's largest gold ETF, driven by fear and chaos in the US government, leads the pack up 8.23% year-to-date. Finally, gold is beating the perennial winner, the bitcoin ETF, GBTC! DJP, the Bloomberg commodity ETF, propelled by precious metals is second on the leaderboard.  Even the leveraged S&P, the 3X SPXL, is beating GBTC, so far. 

GBTC, up 6.87% ytd, doesn't disappoint and is not far behind. Note its fantastic 52 week numbers, up 100+%. With its unique drivers/anonymous demand from money laundering, drug dealing and terrorism, GBTC -the bitcoin of ETFs- will not just outperform but thrive in today's environment of lawless government and the rising Thrift Economy. Such are the fruits of Oligarchy in America.

Again, no surprise. the Nasdaq 3X Leveraged TQQQ is up but not in the same league, lagging its daily target by only basis points. Small caps, ags, energy are all lumped together, with decent plus 3% returns. SPY, the S&P 500 ETF, QQQ the Nasdaq 100 ETF and IWM, the Russell 2000 ETF, collectively are more in line with lower expectations posting 2%+ gains. 

What is a reasonable outlook? If government becomes MORE chaotic and MORE lawless (runaway tariffs, stopped payments, mass layoffs and mass deportations), GLD may continue its fear and loathing and rise to new heights. Likewise GBTC can do the same, although its fundamental demand never stops. Otherwise, say, if the House flips to Dems or the Repubs in Congress put brakes on the White House-gold may come off and the other markets will begin to once again reflect the real exonomy. 

Vista Basket Up 4.8% in January 2025

The Vista Basket of 15 select long-dated commodity futures contracts closed at  $1,284,823.03 up $60,536.00 or 4.8% beating the major commodity index ETFs, DBC up 2.7%, DJP up 4.7% and GSG up 3.5% for the month. The total short-term (since 12/31/2023) and long-term performance (since Vista's 4/30/2009 inception) is shown below:

VISTA = Vista Commodity Basket

DBC = DB Commodity Index Fund Invesco

DJP = Ipath Commodity Index TR ETN

GSG = S&P GSCI Commodity-Indexed Ishares ETF

Continuously compounded performance normalized where 4/30/2009 = 1000.

Source for dividend adjusted closing prices: barchart.com

Continuously compounded annualized returns.

Again, the conservative, largely dormant Vista Basket beats on all periods the headline commodity index ETFs that continually roll and re-roll their neaby contracts over and over within each year. The wisdom of one unavoidable roll per year plus Vista's superior selection criteria work to insure a fairer, lower volatility and more representative index. 

One may ask: Why show the ETFs? Why not show the actual index returns? The short answer is investors cannot own an index, only the ETFs (or other derivatives). Or one can try to replicate the indexes themselves-an onerous process, at best.  So the only way to fairly compare an investable basket is to other investable instruments-in this case, the ETFs. Note also, these are the largest, most liquid and seasoned ETFs in the commodity universe.