One of the better performing commodity based exchange traded funds in 2011 is U.S. Gasoline Fund (NYSEArca: UGA), which is up 15.39% year to date.
The ETF is designed to track the price of gasoline as measured by NYMEX traded gasoline futures contracts.
The fund has followed a fairly volatile path this year, as one can see from looking at a simple chart that the price of the fund has quickly seesawed from the low to mid $50s a share only to fall to the $45 range, and then sharply rebound back into the $50s range again on multiple occasions this year.
Trading volume tends to be sporadic in this fund, with average daily volume tallying about 81,000 shares, but the product is relatively easy to trade in size if executed properly.
UGA will likely appeal to managers that are employing a commodity based strategy in their portfolios, or CTAs (Commodity Trading Advisors) that are investing in commodity futures, forwards, or swaps as a way to supplement their strategies using an ETF.