Friday, March 30, 2012

UNG's Collapse: the Kiss of Death strikes again

The collapse of UNG post reverse split (a.k.a. the Kiss of death) continues. UNG now trades with a 16 handle.


Storage numbers released yesterday showed a stunning increased. The red curve is the current year's curve, compared with the average 5 year range in shaded gray



Remember the kiss of death post on UNG?

Monday, March 19, 2012

3X Gold ETF: precious metal yes, precious No!

This "gem" exists, another 3X ETF, on gold bullion: NUGT.

How has it performed? As expected!


How has it performed compared with GLD? As expected: GLD +16.9%, NUGT: -48.1%.


Run, do not walk.

To track all gold and silver ETFs, please see our tracking live page.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Pimco launches new active ETF for small investors

Pimco, Pacific Investment Management Co., the huge financial company managed by star manager Bill Gross, opened an exchange-traded version of its Pimco Total Return Fund.

Trading today under the ticker symbol TRXT, Gross’s Pimco Total Return ETF started with a net asset value of a mere $100.

“We’ve had two to three years of internal discussions,” Gross said in a telephone interview yesterday from his office in Newport Beach, California. “The challenge is obvious. We could fall flat on our face or we could roar like a lion in a year or two or three and become the largest ETF.”

The new ETF is designed to blend the trading flexibility and accessibility of ETFs with the stock- or bond- picking ability of active management, is a test case for investor interest in a segment that has attracted less than 0.5% of the $1.13 trillion in U.S.-registered ETF assets.

The potential for growth has spurred Pimco, along with at least two dozen other money managers to vie for a slice of the active ETF business, which would compete with the $9.41T mutual fund industry.

Gross, in the interview, said it still bothers him that high brokerage-firm minimums stopped his mother from buying shares of Pimco Total Return Fund, which became the world’s largest mutual fund in 2009. The new ETF aims to get smaller investors into the strategy"

“Small investors don’t always have access to active management with a higher yield and a higher total return,” “We are hoping ‘mom and pop’ can do a little bit better than the bond market at a time of historically low yields.”

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

UNG Kiss of Death - Again! Reverse Splits. Don't Walk, Run.

Ooops, they did it again. it wasn't even that long ago that they had done a reverse split (less than 1 year)

They are called kiss of death for a reason. What happened since the last reverse split?



Did they stock go up +301% Oh no, not at all.

March 11 2011: stock was at the equivalent of today's $42 or so. Last reverse split was from $5 to $10. Obviously that was not enough, so this time it was from $5 or so to $20. Given the current supply glut on natural gas, end result could well be the same.

Japanese Yen falls off a cliff: ETFs to use

After years of climbing for dubious reasons, the Japanese Yen has fallen off a cliff:



The most popular ETF is FXY. There are other long and short ETFs, for example, YCL and YCS. Please see our Currency ETFs tracking live page.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Why You Should Not Buy USO

Larry Bermann pointed out on TV today why you should not buy USO for the long term, nor any other commodities ETFs that trades futures for that matter.

USO was launched when oil was at around $60. Today oil around $100. How about USO:


How is this possible? The reason is the same we point out so often: contango kills these ETFs.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Current natural gas very high contango: Should UNG really rebound?

The popular, yet perennial money-loser UNG dropped to under $5, then recovered a little:



Please consider the current contango situation, through the front month contract prices


Contango is at 4.5% on the two front months, and almost 8% from first to third month.  This is a really bad (high) number. Whenever this happens, UNG suffers.

Buyer beware.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

UNG: Don't Walk, Run!

What else can be said about this dreadful ETF.