koba

1 - I’m pretty sure they treat commodities as both an early upswing and late in cycle asset
2 - i think they mean that if you just bought the index, you would earn the return on the index plus any cash flows (ie dividends) of the idnex. but you only want the return on the index - so you buy the index and borrow the PV of the index, which (sort of) cancel each other out such that your only exposure is to the increase in value of the index
3 - as bpdulog explained