Of course, as we all find out sooner or later in our lives, money is the most basic material of all. Let's overlay the price of the Materials Select SPDR (XLB:Amex - commentary - research) against an index of all traded credit default swaps (CDS) for stocks within the S&P 500's Basic Materials sector. A CDS is nothing more than an insurance contract against a default or other stipulated credit even affecting an issuer's bonds; if exercised, the owner gets to put the bonds back to the CDS writer at par. These contracts are not guaranteed by any clearinghouse, so they carry the full faith and credit of a piece of paper with the writer's picture on it.