Commodities Skirt Credit Concerns

ETF Securities' Brooks, echoing the Barclays Capital report, said that investors seeking to capitalize on opportunities in a generally oversold market with less risk could lean toward commodities. "If there is a bounce across the board, investors may feel safer in commodities where there are not issues related to a company's debt position. Oil is oil and gold is gold. And not even the safest stocks seem safe in this market," said Brooks.

He added that with Oil, even if a market bounce doesn't occur, long-term investors are still buying at a price today that over a multiyear time horizon is very cheap. Also, since oil is a "cartel commodity," some people believe there is more control over its floor level.

"Zinc and oil are at prices below the cost of production for some producers, and that's a sign to some that if the sector has not bottomed out, we are getting closer and seeing people step back in on the long side," said Deutsche Bank's Rich.

He's less of a believer in the bounce hypothesis, though, than in the November commodity numbers showing that investors are positioning commodities as a long-term asset.

At the beginning of the year, the Deutsche products were at $3.5 billion in assets, and at the height of the commodity spike, hit $8 billion during the summer. Post-November, the family is just under $4 billion; take into account falling market prices, and it has more shares outstanding than it had before the boom-and-bust cycle played itself out.

Ultimately, this is not evidence of investors trying to time the market, or bet when a price is cheapest, but shows that investors think it is prudent to hold commodities as a diversifier in long-term asset allocation plans, Rich argues.

Still, could the long and leveraged commodities funds' resurgence in November be part of a general upswing in investor confidence?

ProShares presented one interesting piece of data that could support this hypothesis.

For almost all of its existence, ProShares' assets have been predominantly on the short side, generally at a level between 75% and 80%.

Sapir says that for the first time in the last few weeks, there have been several days when the asset balance between leveraged and short funds was approximately 50%-50%.

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