It can be tough to keep up with the new products that have come
to the exchange traded fund (
ETF
) industry.
Eric Fontinelle for
The San Francisco Chronicle
notes
some of his picks for the most interesting ETFs, which include:
-
China Sector Funds:
Sector-specific China ETFs are great to give investors targeted
exposure to a certain area of the market in China. These ETFs
allow investors to make more precise bets on specific sectors of
the world's second-largest economy. [CHIX)
-
Lithium:
It is not possible to invest in lithium directly because
futures contracts on the metal do not trade on any exchange.
Rather, lithium ETFs invest primarily in lithium miners and
battery makers. Lithium batteries are rechargable and power
cell phones, laptops, cars, and electronics. Demand for these
is constant and on the rise. [LIT)
-
Contrarian Investing:
Contrarian investors believe in buying stocks which have
currently fallen out of favor, but which appear to have
strong fundamentals to make a turn-around at some point in
the future.So far, there is only one ETF tracking this new
index, the
JETS Contrarian Opportunities Index ETF (NYSE: An
ETF for the Contrarian.]
As far as what we've noticed, here are some trends and new funds
that we're finding appealing right now:
-
New Countries.
It's been exciting to see a slew of new single-country funds
filling some gaps in the market. Two notable ones are both from
Market Vectors:
Market Vectors Poland (NYSEArca: The Vast Appeal of
Frontier Market ETFs.]
-
New Ways to Invest Responsibly.
PAX World all but invented the concept of socially responsible
investing, and their ETFs hold a mix of companies that are
evaluated on three primary criteria: environmental, social and
governance.
ESG Shares North America Sustainability (NYSEArca:
NASI)
.
-
Sector Breakdowns.
Now that the broad emerging market indexes have been covered,
several providers are breaking them down further by sector. The
pioneer in this category was Emerging Global Shares, which has
funds like
EGShares Brazil Infrastructure (NYSEArca: EMT)
. Providers like
Claymore
and
Global X
are now doing this, too.
-
More Commodities.
Teucrium
has given the ETF industry a new way to play corn, which was
previously a commodity relegated to trading with other
commodities in a broad basket.
Teucrium Corn Fund (NYSEArca: What Contango Means for
ETFs.]
For more stories and details about new ETFs, visit our
new ETFs category
.
Tisha Guerrero contributed to this article.