Given a text T, and several options, according to the question posed in the text T to choose the most appropriate option from the options as the answer, please directly output the most appropriate option, do not need to output the explanation.

Raffi Musicale is the portfolio manager for a defined benefit pension plan. He meets with Jenny Brown, market strategist with Menlo Bank, to discuss possible investment opportunities. The investment committee for the pension plan has recently approved expanding the plan's permitted asset mix to include alternative asset classes.Brown proposes the Apex Commodity Fund (Apex Fund) offered by Menlo Bank as a potentially suitable investment for the pension plan. The Apex Fund attempts to produce trading profits by capitalizing on the mispricing between the spot and futures prices of commodities. The fund has access to storage facilities, allowing it to take delivery of commodities when necessary. The Apex Fund's current asset allocation is presented in Exhibit 1.
| Exhibit l Apex Fund's Asset Allocation |
| Commodity Sector | Allocation(%) |
| Energy | 31.9 |
| Livestock | 12.6 |
| Softs | 21.7 |
| Precious metals | 33.8 |


Brown explains that the Apex Fund has had historically low correlations with stocks and bonds, resulting in diversification benefits. Musicale asks Brown, “Can you identify a factor that affects the valuation of financial assets like stocks and bonds but does not affect the valuation of commodities?”Brown shares selected futures contract data for three markets in which the Apex Fund invests. The futures data are presented in Exhibit 2.
| Exhibit 2 Selected Commodity Futures Data* |
| Month | Gold Price | Coffee Price | Gasoline Price |
| July | 1，301.2 | 09600 | 2.2701 |
| September | 1，301.2 | 0.9795 | 2.2076 |
| December | 1，301.2 | 1.0055 | 2.0307 |


Menlo Bank recently released a report on the coffee market. Brown shares the key conclusion from the report with Musicale: “The coffee market had a global harvest that was greater than expected. Despite the large harvest, coffee futures trading activity is balanced between producers and consumers. This balanced condition is not expected to change over the next year”Brown shows Musicale the total return of a recent trade executed by the Apex Fund. Brown explains that the Apex Fund took a fully collateralized long futures position in nearby soybean futures contracts at the quoted futures price of 865.0 (US cents/bushel). Three months later, the entire futures position was rolled when the near-term futures price was 877.0 and the farther-term futures price was 883.0. During the three-month period between the time that the initial long position was taken and the rolling of the contract, the collateral earned an annualized rate of 0.60%.Brown tells Musicale that the pension fund could alternatively gain long exposure to commodities using the swap market. Brown and Musicale analyze the performance of a long position in an S&P GSCI total return swap having monthly resets and a notional amount of $25 million. Selected data on the S&P GSCI are presented in Exhibit 3.
| Exhibit 3 Selected S&PG SCI Data |
| Reference Date | Index Level |
| April(swap initiation) | 2，542.35 |
| May | 2，582.23 |
| June | 2，525.21 |


 
The Apex Fund is most likely to be characterized as:
Option A:a hedger.
Option B:a speculator.
Option C:an arbitrageur.

Answer: C