📋Commodity Summary for Half-Year and Quarter: Main Losers and Winners

Key Market Paradigm: Dominance of the Roll Yield Mechanism

Comparing the price return (Generic Return — pure front-month contract price change) with the total return (Total Return including income or cost of rolling positions) clearly reveals that in 2026, it was the term structure of contracts, not the price direction itself, that was the main driver of results in the commodity market, especially in the energy sector. That is why analyzing the term structure of commodities is so crucial in daily trading, particularly in a slightly longer term than day-trading. What term structures do we have?

• Backwardation (tight supply): Further contracts are cheaper than the nearest ones. Rolling the position results in a higher amount of repurchased futures contracts, which is illustrated by swap points. This situation dominated the fuel market in H1.
• Contango (oversupply / high inventories): Further contracts are more expensive than nearer ones. Rolling the position usually generates a loss, because after opening the next contract higher, prices usually fall later. Commodities in a contango structure usually bring worse rates of return (visible, among others, in the corn and gas markets in Q2).

It is worth emphasizing that the presented returns concern futures contracts presented by Bloomberg, while the roll yield is calculated by rolling futures contracts 5 days before the expiry of the futures contracts.

Analysis of the first half of 2026

The first half of the year was marked by the absolute dominance of the fuel and energy complex driven by a structural shortage of physical supply.

Winners of the first half: Fuel complex in deep backwardation

• ICE Gasoil: The undisputed leader of the half-year. Despite a price increase of +52.3%, the total return was as high as +156.9%. More than two-thirds of the profit came directly from the roll premium, reflecting the dramatic deficit of middle distillates and the crisis of global refining capacities.
• Diesel (NY Harbor ULSD): Recorded a similar pattern: a price increase of +58.3% translated into a +117.5% Total Return rate.
• Crude oil (Brent and WTI): Deep backwardation cushioned market uncertainty. Brent gained +20.3% in price, but yielded as much as +77.2% in total profit. WTI rose by +22.0% (price) / +61.3% (Total Return).
• Natural Gas: An extreme case, proving the misleading nature of spot prices alone. The gas price fell by -8.3%, however, taking into account the rolling of futures contracts, investors could potentially have earned +69.6% from the rolling of the position alone with the massive volatility of the instrument. It is worth remembering that in the first months of the year we were dealing with extreme backwardation.
• RBOB Gasoline and Soybean Oil: Exceptions where profits were driven by real consumer and biofuel demand (Gasoline: +79.8% price / +88.6% total return; Soybean oil: +37.3% price / +41.7% total return).

Losers of the first half: Structural…