Friday, October 26, 2007

Merrill Lynch introduces biofuels indices

From energy risk:

Investment bank Merrill Lynch has introduced two indices designed to offer investors exposure to the fast-growing biofuels market.

The bank says the MLCX Biofuels Index and the MLCX Biofuels Plus Index will offer greater liquidity, transparency and efficiency than financial instruments currently available.

According to the bank, investors seeking to profit from rapid expansion in the ethanol and biodiesel industries have until now recurred to traditional agricultural commodity indices or futures. Such instruments are vulnerable to very negative roll returns, or negative carry, due to the storage dynamics of the underlying agricultural commodity markets. The new indices use a rolling mechanism to spread the buying and selling process over 15 days....MORE