A recent addition to its offer, Diapason Commodities Management SA has introduced the Diapason Commodities Index® in June 2006.

In order to achieve the very broadest reflection of the global commodity market – while maintaining strict standards relating to the liquidity of the underlying contracts - the DCI consists of 48 separate commodity futures, each traded inside the OECD.

The index incorporates several significant advances in its composition, among them the fact that, as well as having such traditional US contracts as wheat and corn, the agricultural products also list both US and European versions of sugar and coffee in acknowledgement of the genuine segmentation of the physical market for these staples.

Additionally, the US soy contracts (which have no restrictions upon genetically-modified strains) have been supplemented – for the first time – with the Tokyo non-GM soy contract, the better to reflect global consumer preferences in this important area.

In a similar vein, the energy components are not as heavily biased to oil products as is the norm. Another first for this index is, therefore, the inclusion of coal, electricity, and ethanol futures – the lattermost aimed at introducing exposure to the growing range of non-fossil energy sources being drawn upon worldwide.

 Naturally, the index also includes futures on a range of industrial and precious metals such as copper, zinc, and gold.

The make-up of the DCI relies on a calculation involving two concepts:

• The World Contract Liquidity, or WCL, which takes account of the contract value and open interest of the individual components which constitutes 66.66% of the DCI®
   
• The World Trade Significance, or WTS, which is based on world export share and which contributes 33.33% of the final DCI® weighting.