Agreed... Apart from my pension fund, I haven't started investing in the stockmarket yet but have been reading up on it for quite a while now as I intend to start soon.
From my limited knowledge (not experience mind you), commodities seem to be more of a constituent of a large diversified portfolio.
The stockmarket is probably the best place to start investing and then, when you have a really large portfolio, you might want to add an element of commodities to it for diversification. For example, I am considering investing in shares or ETF's until my portfolio reaches, for example, twice my annual wage. Then I'll consider investing 5-10% of that amount in a commodity such as Gold or Silver as a hedge.