This is part three of a four part series this week that looks at commodity ETFs and ETNs. For the first installment covering index-based products, see this
item from Tuesday and, for energy funds, see yesterday's
post.
Today, the subject is precious metals and base metals where there is very little of interest going on aside from the "elephant in the living room" in the first row of the table below - the gargantuan (and still growing) assets for the SPDR Gold Shares ETF (NYSEArca:
GLD).
(Note: All year-to-date gains/losses are based on the May 22nd market close (last Friday) and the commodity offerings are listed in the order that they became available.)
The $31.4 billion gold ETF (an even $36.0 billion according to the SPDR
website as this is written) dwarfs every other commodity fund and stands as the second largest ETF offering of any kind, behind only the SPDR S&P500 ETF (NYSEArca:
SPY) at about double the size.
My how the world has changed over the last few years.
Trading volume remains quite heavy at about 17 million shares a day, well short of the the wildly popular PowerShares DB Crude Oil Double Long ETN (NYSEArca:
DXO) as noted yesterday, but impressive nonetheless.
Like other gold funds, GLD isn't having much trouble tracking its underlying commodity, this collection of ETFs and ETNs being downright boring compared to the contango-driven problems in energy funds discussed yesterday.
