If you’re tempted to invest in commodities as a hedge against inflation, beware. Commodities are such a minefield, you can be right and still lose money. The Labor Department’s early-February jobs report showed that inflationary pressures are building. More recently it reported that the Consumer Price Index rose a much-stronger-than-expected 0.5% in the latest month. The argument goes that inflation is a positive for commodities. Thing is, “commodities” is not a homogenous asset class. Instead, commodities often have little to do with each other. Case in point: Not all commodities historically have been good inflation hedges. Consider the extent to which various commodities have responded in the past to inflation, according to a study that appeared in the Financial Analysts Journalseveral years ago by Claude Erb, a former fixed-income and commodities manager at mutual-fund firm TCW Group, and Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Their research began with results from 1982, since that was the first year that heating oil futures were traded in the U.S. Over the subsequent 20+ years until the date of their study, inflation varied from more than 6% annually to below 2%.via