Spurred on by the recent success of newly launched exchange-traded funds tracking gold prices, the mutual fund industry is now pondering other commodities-based index investments offering diversified exposure to skyrocketing oil markets, CBSMarketWatch reports.
State Street Global Advisors newly launched StreetTracks Gold Trust provoked money managers interests in commodities-based ETFs by attracting $1.3 billion within its first three trading days.
Based on the Gold Trusts immediate success, an expert at Lipper ventured to speculate on additional ETFs following other commodities, like silver, platinum and palladium. Currency ETFs are also in the realm of probability, another expert said.
The relatively young ETF business quickly has ballooned to $180.1 billion invested in 143 portfolios. Technical advances in ETF arbitrage systems have reached a level capable of tracking multiple commodity indexes with a single investment, another expert said.
__
The staff of Money Management Executive ("MME") has prepared these capsule summaries based on reports published by the news sources to which they are attributed. Those news sources are not associated with MME, and have not prepared, sponsored, endorsed, or approved these summaries.
