Commodity and volatility-linked exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and exchange-traded products (ETPs) featured prominently on last week’s best performers list.
Volatility-linked products were atop last week’s list of top performing ETFs following more uncertainty in financial markets associated with poor economic news and political ambiguity. In the US, unemployment data showed modest job growth, but feel short of expectations. In Europe, uncertainty surrounding the direction of eurozone policy loomed as France prepared for its second-round election run-off between Hollande and Sarkozy and the majority coalition government in the Netherlands collapsed. With so much political uncertainty, markets were concerned that a Hollande victory might upset the Franco-German balance of power that had promoted austerity packages throughout the region.
Natural gas rallied last week as the US Energy Information Administration announced that domestic gas inventories rose less than expected. Moreover, natural gas prices were buoyed by forecasts of below-normal temperatures in the US, which may boost peak power demand in the short-run. This gave a boost to ETFs tracking natural gas. Specifically, the Source S&P GSCI Natural Gas TR T-ETC (SNGAS) rose by 4.1% this past week, after rallying by 8.5% in the prior week.
Russian equity ETFs littered the list of the worst performing products last week. Russian equity indices tend to be dominated by oil and gas companies and are therefore very susceptible to movements in the price of crude oil. Last week, world crude oil futures fell by over 6% to three-month lows.