A commodity pool is an investment structure where many individual investors combine their moneys and trade in futures contracts as a single entity in order to gain leverage.
Commodity pools are also called "managed futures funds".
The name "commodity pool" is a National Futures Association (NFA) legal term.
In the United States, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the NFA, as opposed to the Securities and Exchange Commission, regulate commodity pools.
In an address to the Securities Industry Association in 2004, Sharon Brown-Hruska, acting director of the CFTC, said that 65 of the top 100 funds in 2003 were commodity pools, and 50 out of the 100 largest hedge funds were CTAs in addition to being commodity pools.