Friday, March 27, 2009

New ETF Tries to Replicate Hedge Funds. And: Momentum-Based Commodities ETF

The creativity of Wall Street marketing folks is amazing. From ETF Trends:
After getting the go-ahead from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), IndexIQ is moving forward with an innovative new exchange traded fund (ETF).

The IQ Hedge Multi-Strategy Tracker (QAI) began trading today. IndexIQ analyzes publicly available hedge-fund performance data, then tries to match returns using ETFs and other liquid trading vehicles. The fund won’t invest in hedge funds. It has an expense ratio of 0.75%, says Joseph Checkler for Dow Jones Newswires.

IndexIQ has had luck with other hedge fund replication products, including the IQ Alpha Hedge Strategy Fund, a mutual fund that was down just 4.1% for the year, compared to an 18.2% loss in the S&P 500....MORE

And from IndexUniverse:

Claymore Securities has filed papers for a new ETF tracking the Standard & Poor's Commodity Trends Indicator, a momentum-based commodities index that aims to outperform the broader commodities market.

The index tracks 16 commodities futures contracts divided into six sectors: Energy, Industrial Metals, Precious Metals, Livestock, Grains and Softs. Rather than simply taking a long position in each commodity, however, the index takes either a long/short or long/flat approach based on momentum trends in each sector. The index will short all sectors except for Energy; if momentum is trending against Energy, the index will simply exclude the sector altogether.

Academic theory suggests that momentum trends are persistent in the commodities market, and that a simple momentum-based index can exploit those trends.

The Elements platform already has an ETN tracking this index. The Elements S&P CTI Index ETN (NYSEArca: LSC) has more than $50 million in assets and has been trading since June 2008. Since that time, it has been by far the best-performing broad-based commodity product on the market....MORE

HT: Abnormal Returns