After months of steady appreciation, gold has been on a bit of a wild ride over the last week or so. The precious metal has climbed to new heights repeatedly in 2011, thriving off of rising anxiety surrounding global equity markets, flights to safety after unprecedented downgrades, and even some weakness in the U.S. dollar. But last week gold encountered a rather rough patch that lent some credence to the notion that prices have inflated to bubble levels over the last few months. Investors fled gold ETFs in droves, taking profits generated during the run-up and jumping back into risky assets that have been battered by the wave of general risk aversion. [click to continue…]
Although there are now nearly 1,100 exchange-traded products available to U.S. investors, the universe of ETFs utilized by most long-term buy-and-holders is considerably smaller. Beyond the “plain vanilla” portfolio building block ETFs, recent years have seen the introduction of hundreds of more targeted and complex ETPs that offer exposure to exotic asset classes and regions [...]
United States Commodity Funds, the company behind several of the largest futures-based exchange-traded commodity products, added a new fund to its lineup this week. The United States Brent Oil Fund (BNO) began trading on Wednesday, becoming the eighth product offered by USCF. The objective of BNO is for the daily changes in percentage terms of [...]
Direxion, the ETF sponsor responsible for many of the most heavily-traded ETFs on the market, is reportedly making some changes to its line of mutual funds that may ultimately impact the leveraged ETF industry.
With uncertainty and risk aversion dominating investor psychology in the first quarter of the year, gold ETFs have benefited, increasing dramatically in the first three months of 2009. According to the World Gold Council, investments in gold ETFs increased to $13.58 billion in the first quarter, representing more than six times the amount held in [...]
