Investors typically look to a commodities allocation to provide three key benefits to their portfolios: inflation protection, diversification, and return potential.

Because commodities are “real assets,” they tend to react to changing economic fundamentals in different ways than stocks and bonds, which are “financial assets.” For example, commodities are one of the few asset classes that tend to benefit from rising inflation. As demand for goods and services increases, the price of those goods and services usually rises as well, as do the prices of the commodities used to produce those goods and services. Because commodity prices usually rise when inflation is accelerating, investing in commodities may provide portfolios with a hedge against inflation.

In contrast, stocks and bonds tend to perform better when the rate of inflation is stable or slowing. Faster inflation lowers the value of future cash flows paid by stocks and bonds because that future cash will be able to buy fewer goods and services than they would today.