Today we examine one of the weakest performing commodity based ETF categories thus far in 2013, Silver.
Much has been made of the staggering performance in sister precious metal Gold this year corresponding with huge asset outflows in leading Gold ETPs (GLD -$16.7 bln YTD, IAU -$1.4 billion YTD), and in reality Silver has fared much worse (to the tune of about 1000 basis points worse year to date).
The largest ETF in terms of assets under management that focuses on Silver is SLV (iShares Silver, Expense Ratio 0.50%), which currently has $6.9 billion in AUM and no signs of mass outflows despite the poor performance this year (YTD it has actually added $76 mln via creation activity).
The next closest ETP in terms of size behind SLV in this category is the leveraged AGQ (ProShares Ultra Silver, Expense Ratio 0.95%) which is designed to deliver two times the daily return of silver bullion, and this fund has become quite popular among short term traders and aggressive hedgers and speculators on the “bull” side.