A Bumper Crop of Agricultural Products
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The PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund (AMEX: DBA) was launched in 2007. DBA tracks the Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodity Index-Optimum Yield Agriculture by investing in an equally weighted portfolio of corn, wheat, soybean and sugar futures collateralized by U.S. Treasury securities.
Four newly minted Deutsche Bank ETNs offer long and short takes on the ag index:
DB Agriculture Long ETN (NYSE Arca: AGF)DB Agriculture Double Long ETN (NYSE Arca: DAG)DB Agriculture Short ETN (NYSE Arca: ADZ)DB Agriculture Double Short ETN (NYSE Arca: AGA)
The ELEMENTS Rogers International Commodity Agriculture ETN (AMEX: RJA) represents a basket of 20 agricultural commodity futures contracts and tracks a subindex of the Rogers International Commodity Index. Components are weighted by global consumption and liquidity. About 54% of RJA's underlying index weight is attributed to wheat, corn, cotton and soybeans.
A Barclays Bank-issued note, the iPath Dow Jones-AIG Agriculture Total Return Sub-Index ETN (NYSE Arca: JJA), provides exposure to a seven-commodity index comprised of wheat, corn, soybeans, soybean oil, coffee and cotton. Wheat, corn and soybeans alone make up two-thirds of the underlying index's weight.
The Opta Lehman Brothers Commodity Index Pure Beta Agriculture Total Return Index is tracked by the Opta LBCI Agriculture Pure Beta Total Return ETN (AMEX: EOH). The index is based upon eight commodities skewed heavily (39% presently) toward soybean exposure. The other components include corn, soybean meal, soybean oil, wheat, coffee, cotton and sugar.
The UBS E-TRACS CMCI Agriculture Total Return ETN (NYSE Arca: UAG) follows the performance of the UBS Bloomberg CMCI Agriculture Index-Total Return, a basket of a dozen futures contracts including two grades of wheat, corn, soybeans, soybean oil, soybean meal, two grades of sugar, cocoa, coffee and orange juice. Futures contracts are further diversified across three maturities based on relative liquidity.
The volume figures speak, well, volumes about investors' current thinking. The recent bearish tone in the agriculture sector has attracted investor interest in the short, and most particularly, the double short, notes.
There's yet another ETF in the agriculture space but, because it's based upon a stock index rather than a commodity index, it's not directly comparable to the securities we've just examined. That might not be such a bad thing, however, After all, seven of the nine products listed have yielded an average negative return of 8.6% over the past three weeks.
The Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF (AMEX: MOO) replicates the 44-stock DAXglobal Agribusiness Index, a benchmark of companies engaged in the production of foodstuffs, agricultural chemicals, farming equipment and biofuels. Buoyed by a resurgent equity market, MOO's share price has only dipped a half percent in the past three weeks. |
