HardAssetsInvestor

Written by Brad Zigler  |

May 28, 2008

Plenty To Choose From In New Filings

Details

This week, securities regulators' coffee tab shot up - big time - as a plethora of new ETF filings for the commodity space threatened to keep workers reading late into the night.

The recent barrowful of filings included a direct answer to the plaint raised in one of our previous screeds ("Where Are The Short Funds?"). Bear fund filings galore are now on the horizon.

In all, nearly three dozen commodity-related applications from Barclays Global Investors, Direxion Funds, ProShares and Van Eck choked the in-box slot at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

BGI is jumping on the "slice-and-dice" bandwagon by carving up a Goldman Sachs futures benchmark into a half-dozen subsectors for ETF tracking. Destined to be priced at 89 basis points (0.89%), the new family includes the potential to play energy against nonenergy ("us versus them" for many traders nowadays):

 

• GS Commodity Energy Trust
• GS Commodity Industrial Metals Indexed Trust
• GS Commodity Light Energy Indexed Trust
• GS Commodity Livestock Indexed Trust
• GS Commodity Natural Gas Indexed Trust
• GS Commodity Non-Energy Indexed Trust

 

Direxion Funds, formerly the Potomac Funds, leverages its, er, leverage further with a filing for:

 

• Commodity Bull X3
• Commodity Bear X3

 

These portfolios, advised by Rafferty Capital and each carrying a 75 bp price tag, are designed to offer three times (300%) the daily return - directly and inversely - of the Morgan Stanley Commodity Index. The buzz about these portfolios is already loud, with advocates and opponents shouting at each other about the merits and detriments of 300% leverage. Oh, well. At least they're relatively cheap ... for commodity products.

ProShares, the ETF marque of leverage-and-inverse veteran ProFunds, unloaded its truck with two dozen new fund offerings, including sector splits of the DJ-AIG Commodity Index and some one-offs:

 

• Ultra Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Fund
• Short Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Fund
• Ultra Short Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Fund

 

• Ultra Dow Jones-AIG Precious Metal Fund
• Short Dow Jones-AIG Precious Metal Fund
• Ultra Short Dow Jones-AIG Precious Metal Fund

 

• Ultra Dow Jones-AIG Industrial Metals Fund
• Short Dow Jones-AIG Industrial Metals Fund
• Ultra Short Dow Jones-AIG Industrial Metals Fund

 

• Ultra Dow Jones-AIG Agriculture Fund
• Short Dow Jones-AIG Agriculture Fund
• Ultra Short Dow Jones-AIG Agriculture Fund

 

• Ultra Gold Fund
• Short Gold Fund
• Ultra Short Gold Fund

 

• Ultra Silver Fund
• Short Silver Fund
• Ultra Short Silver Fund

 

• Ultra Crude Oil Fund
• Short Crude Oil Fund
• Ultra Short Crude Oil Fund

 

• Ultra Natural Gas Fund
• Short Natural Gas Fund
• Ultra Short Natural Gas Fund

 

The "Ultra" funds will attempt to track at 200% of the daily returns of their underlying benchmarks. "Short" and "Ultra Short" portfolios are designed to crank out 100% and 200% of the inverse daily returns, respectively. All the ProShares products are expected to be run at a 95 bp expense ratio. Not cheap, but what price hedging?

Finally, Van Eck Global weighs in with an equities-based tracker on the S-Network Hard Assets Producers Index, a benchmark representing a global universe of companies engaged in the production of raw materials, finished goods and services in the agriculture, alternative water/energy, industrial metals, energy, forest products and precious metals sectors.

 

• Hard Assets Producers Index Fund

 

Van Eck hasn't set a price for its fund offering yet.