ETF Trading Report: British, Agricultural ETFs In Focus - ETF News And Commentary
June 26 2012 - 1:55PM
Zacks
U.S. equity markets rose during Tuesday trading as strong
housing data carried shares higher on the day. In the latest
release of the S&P Case Shiller Home Price Index, the 20-City
seasonally adjusted figures rose by 0.7%, crushing the consensus
which called for a 0.4% rise. Meanwhile, the non-seasonally
adjusted year-over-year figures showed a -1.9% decline, beating out
estimates on this metric as well.
Thanks to this, investors were able to shrug off some lukewarm
consumer data and push the Dow higher by about 0.3%, the S&P
500 up 0.5%, and the Nasdaq to a 0.6% gain. The gains were
concentrated in the basic materials, banking, and services sectors,
while consumer goods, industrials, and tech led on the downside for
Tuesday trading (read Is MFLA the Worst ETF in the World?).
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar was pretty much flat
against the world’s major currencies, while the biggest moves came
in the resource currencies as the AUD/USD pair added about half a
percent while the USD/CAD pair fell by a similar amount. Bond
trading was similarly flat, although investors did see some
outflows in the longer part of the curve as both the 10 and 30 year
Treasury bonds added three basis points in yield on the
session.
Commodity markets also cooled off a bit, although most products
did trend into the green. The notable exceptions to this were in
the precious metals market while on the upside, corn continued its
impressive run as Brent crude and natural gas also added a few
percentage points on the day as well.
ETF trading was relatively light across the board, led by more
weak volume sessions in many of the country’s most famous products.
Especially weak was in the big broad market funds and those focused
on the materials space, while outsized trading volume was seen in
some of the U.S. sector products and a few international ETFs as
well.
In particular, investors saw a pop in interest for the
iShares MSCI United Kingdom Index Fund (EWU). This
product usually trades about 1.45 million shares in a normal
session but saw a spike to 4.3 million today (read UK ETF Investing
101).
This bump in volume came as EWU added about 1% on the session as
the product outpaced many of its mainland cousins both in terms of
volume increases and performance. The ETF was also probably
assisted by the heavy basic materials/energy contingent in the
fund, something that many other European ETFs do not have, helping
EWU to lead the space higher on Tuesday trading.
Once again in focus was also the PowerShares DB
Agricultural Fund (DBA) which sees about 777,000 shares
change hands in a normal session, but spiked to 3.4 million in
Tuesday’s trading. A number of other ETFs in the agricultural
commodity space also saw increased interest on the day, although
this was especially the case for the grain commodity focused
products in the segment (also read USAG In Focus As Agricultural
Commodity ETFs Soar).
Clearly, the space is still under the microscope thanks to the
extreme volatility in the ag market, largely due to the recent bout
of hot weather. This has pushed many grains up to high levels in
recent trading days as the weather has wilted crops around the
region. Seemingly, investors are using DBA and similar products in
order to make a play on this trend going forward into July.
(see more on ETFs at the Zacks ETF Center)
PWRSH-DB AGRIC (DBA): ETF Research Reports
ISHARS-UNITED K (EWU): ETF Research Reports
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