Currency traders rejoice for the recent addition of the Russian Ruble exchange traded fund (ETF) to the growing family of currency funds.

Rydex Investments recently launched the CurrencyShares Russian Ruble Trust (XRU), a first for Russian currency in the exchange-traded format, writes Eric Rosenbaum for IndexUniverse.

XRU is the first true emerging market currency fund in the Rydex CurrencyShares category. The new fund has an expense ratio of 0.40%, which is 0.05% lower than its competitor’s currency funds.

Recent market activities such as U.S. dollar surge against other currencies and oil’s weakness resulted in the ruble’s two-year low against the dollar in October.

Despite the short-term problems, Russia is still a major oil producer with the third largest monetary reserve in the world. In the short-term, asset gathering could be sluggish.

Investors who access to the ruble will want to play the day-to-day volatility in the markets as well as play one currency against another based on correlation stories.

Read the disclosure, as Tom Lydon is a board member of Rydex Funds.

Tags: Currency ETFs, Eastern Europe, Emerging Markets, Russia, Russian Ruble, XRU