On January 11, the new target weightings for the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity IndexSM went into effect. Each year, the index supervisory committee, relying on global production and liquidity statistics, determines the weight that each of the 19 component commodities will represent at the start of the year. Thereafter, each component's weight fluctuates according to underlying market movements. An analysis of the weights provides some interesting insights into the relative movement of commodities.
The table below lists the target weight for each component commodity for each of the past three years:
| COMMODITY | 2008 TARGET | 2009 TARGET | 2010 TARGET |
| Crude Oil | 13.16% | 13.75% | 14.34% |
| Natural Gas | 12.24% | 11.89% | 11.55% |
| Gold | 7.40% | 7.86% | 9.12% |
| Soybeans | 7.63% | 7.60% | 7.91% |
| Copper | 7.04% | 7.31% | 7.64% |
| Corn | 5.66% | 5.72% | 7.09% |
| Aluminum | 7.11% | 7.00% | 5.75% |
| Wheat | 4.70% | 4.80% | 4.70% |
| Heating Oil | 3.82% | 3.65% | 3.58% |
| Live Cattle | 4.89% | 4.29% | 3.55% |
| Unleaded Gasoline | 3.78% | 3.71% | 3.53% |
| Silver | 2.72% | 2.89% | 3.29% |
| Zinc | 3.03% | 3.14% | 3.02% |
| Soybean Oil | 2.81% | 2.88% | 3.00% |
| Sugar | 3.19% | 2.99% | 2.89% |
| Coffee | 3.00% | 2.97% | 2.56% |
| Nickel | 2.79% | 2.88% | 2.37% |
| Lean Hogs | 2.55% | 2.40% | 2.10% |
| Cotton | 2.48% | 2.27% | 2.00% |
Seven commodities saw weight increases from 2009 to 2010; 12 saw reductions. Crude oil, the commodity with the largest allocation in 2009, is weighted even more heavily in 2010. Corn, gold and crude oil experienced the largest absolute increases in target weight, gaining 1.37%, 1.26% and 0.59%, respectively. Conversely, aluminum, live cattle and nickel experienced the largest target weight decreases on a year-over-year basis, losing 1.25%, 0.74% and 0.51%, respectively.
Looking at the subgroups, we see that energy—which is comprised of crude, unleaded gasoline, heating oil and natural gas—remains at 33%, the cap for any single commodity group as dictated by the index methodology. With the increase in the crude oil weighing, all other energy components experienced weighting reductions over the observed years. The industrial metals, livestock and softs subgroups all lost weight versus their 2009 targets, with precious metals and grains benefiting in the weight shift. Gold and silver, the only components of the precious metals subgroup, enjoyed target weight gains due in part to the increased trading stemming from inflation concerns.