Morningstar announces new index family

Morningstar Inc., the Chicago-based research firm, has released a group of five commodity futures indexes that are designed for investors in search of benchmarks.
The new index family combines long and short futures and cash (which are labeled as “flat” positions), and includes the Morningstar Long/Short, Long/Flat, Short/Flat, Long-only and Short-only Commodity Indexes.
Using price changes, as well as the loss or gain resulting from replacing a contract with one that matures in the future, Morningstar figures out a “linked” price for each commodity.
During monthly rebalancing, the investment research company also considers changes to the direction of the commodities in the long/short, long/flat and short/flat indexes.
These changes are based on whether the linked price is above or below the 12-month moving average.
The five indexes, which have a history going back to1980, track 20 commodities.