Overview
The DJ-UBSCI is composed of futures contracts on physical commodities. Unlike equities, which typically entitle the holder to a continuing stake in a corporation, commodity futures contracts normally specify a certain date for the delivery of the underlying physical commodity. In order to avoid the delivery process and maintain a long futures position, nearby contracts must be sold and contracts that have not yet reached the delivery period must be purchased. This process is known as "rolling" a futures position.
The DJ-UBSCI is composed of commodities traded on U.S. exchanges, with the exception of aluminum, nickel and zinc, which trade on the London Metal Exchange (LME). Trading hours for the U.S. commodity exchanges are between 8:00 AM and 3:00 PM ET. A daily settlement price for the index is published at approximately 5:00 PM ET.
Indexes in the DJ-UBSCI family are calculated on both an excess return and total return basis. The excess return indexes reflect the return of underlying commodity futures price movements only, whereas the total return indexes reflect the theoretical return on fully-collateralized futures positions.
Included in the DJ-UBSCI family are subindexes representing the major commodity sectors within the broad index: Energy (including petroleum and natural gas), Petroleum (including crude oil, heating oil and unleaded gasoline), Precious Metals, Industrial Metals, Grains, Livestock, Softs, Agriculture and ExEnergy. Also available are individual commodity subindexes on the 19 components currently included in the DJ-UBSCI℠, plus brent crude, cocoa, feeder cattle, gas oil, lead, orange juice, platinum, soybean meal and tin.
The DJ-UBSCI family additionally includes forward indexes, which are designed to represent the index composition one, two and three months into the future. These forward indexes meet the increasing interest in tracking exposure to longer-dated commodity futures contracts. Yen, Euro, Swiss Franc and Pounds Sterling denominated versions of the DJ-UBSCI and the DJ-UBSCITR also are maintained.