Speculative money is the grease for the wheels of a futures market, we're often told. A report this week indicated more lubricants could be on the way.

Barclays Capital, the international investment bank, released results of an audience survey it conducted at a commodity investor conference it held last week in Barcelona.

The survey results indicated 45 percent of attendees had increased their direct commodity exposure in the past 12 months, and 26 percent had held exposure constant, while 65 percent expect to initiate or increase exposure during the next 3 years -- numbers that probably go a long way in defining the nature of the audience (I can promise you, if I were in Barcelona, I'd only be at a conference like this if I was already interested in commodity investment).

With that number as a kind of disclaimer, it's still interesting to look at some of the other survey questions.

Two-thirds of attendees indicated they expected inflows to direct commodity investments to remain at or go above an all-time high in 2009 of $70 billion.

The biggest concern about commodity investing was the possibility of a deterioration in commodity fundamentals, with fewer worried about the impact of regulation, negative roll yield or deflation.

Bullish sentiment abounded: only 5 percent expect annual average benchmark commodity returns in the next five years at zero to down 10 percent, while 47 percent expect returns between 6 percent and 10 percent.

Attendees were also asked to identify which commodity market or sector they expected to perform best in 2010. Platinum, related metals, copper and freight are among those expected to perform the best, but 10 percent of the attendees indicated they expected the grain sector to perform best.

According to Bloomberg, about 250 people attended the conference, mostly from European institutions.

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