HardAssetsInvestor

Written by Drew Voros  |

June 29, 2012

Commodity ETF Flows: Energy ETFs See $373 Million Inflow, GDX Loses $210 Million

Details

Investors buy energy exchange-traded funds, including XLE and USO.

Overall commodity flows saw little movement this week; investors only added $86 million to exchange-traded commodity products. However, energy was a winner in the period, as it garnered $373 million worth of investor capital amid speculation that oil prices may have bottomed out. Industrial metals ETPs saw a much smaller inflow—$27 million.

In contrast, precious metals funds saw an outflow of $248 million. Broad market (multicommodity) and agriculture ETPs had outflows of $64 million and $2 million, respectively.

Assets under management in commodity-related exchange-traded products now total $151.6 billion.

ETP Inflows/Outflows

Taking a look at individual ETPs, unsurprisingly, energy names were far and away the best performers. Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE Arca: XLE), United States Oil Fund (NYSE Arca: USO), PowerShares Ultra DJ-UBS Crude Oil (NYSE Arca: UCO), and Direxion Daily Energy Bull 3x (NYSE Arca: ERX) saw inflows of $189 million, $93 million, $75 million and $61 million, respectively.

The sole non-energy fund in the top five was PowerShares DB Agriculture (NYSE Arca: DBA), with an inflow of $61 million.

In contrast, the worst-performing fund this week was the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSE Arca: GDX), which saw an outflow of $210 million. It was followed by the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (NYSE Arca: XOP), Market Vector Agribusiness ETF (NYSE Arca: MOO), iShares Silver Trust (NYSE Arca: SLV), and SPDR S&P Metals and Mining (NYSE Arca: XME) with outflows of $105 million, $62 million, $47 million, and $37 million, respectively.

ETP Performance

In terms of price performance, grain-related ETPs were at the top, though iPath Global Carbon ETN (NYSE Arca: GRN) took the No. 1 spot, with a 27.8 percent gain.

Teucrium Corn (NYSE Arca: CORN), iPath Pure Beta Grains ETN (NYSE Arca: WEET), Teucrium Wheat (NYSE Arca: WEAT), and ELEMENTS MLCX Grains (NYSE Arca: GRU) rallied by 10.7 percent, 10.48 percent, 9.4 percent, and 9.19 percent, respectively.

On the other end of the spectrum, iPath Dow Jones-UBS Natural Gas Total Return ETN (NYSE Arca: GAZ) was the worst performer, as the fund declined due to fluctuations in its large premium to NAV.

ELEMENTS Credit Suisse Global Warming ETN (NYSE Arca: GWO), iPath Pure Beta Cotton ETN (NYSE Arca: GWO), Global X Gold Explorers (NYSE Arca: GLDX), and ETFS Physical Palladium (NYSE Arca: PALL) followed, with declines of 7.84 percent, 7.26 percent, 7.19 percent, and 7.17 percent, respectively.

Fund Flows Data: (June 22-28, 2012)

Commodity ETF Weekly Flows By Sector

Top 5 Commodity ETF Creations

Top 5 Commodity ETF Redemptions

Top 5 Weekly Performers, Excluding <1,000 Shares Traded

Bottom 5 Weekly Performers, Excluding <1,000 Shares Traded

Top 5 Volume Surprises, Funds >$50 mm AUM

Disclaimer: Data provided by IndexUniverse. All data as of 6 a.m. Eastern the date of publication. Data is believed to be accurate; however, transient market data is often subject to subsequent revision and correction by the exchanges.