If one were to look at a year to date performance head to head chart with the U.S. Dollar versus the S&P 500 Index, we believe that most folks may be a bit surprised by the results.
Both are up handily and in double digits, with what looks to be a longer trend of stocks and the U.S. Dollar exhibiting little correlation, to being rather strongly correlated in 2014 at least.
With today’s leg up to $23.90 in UUP (PowerShares DB U.S. Dollar Index Bullish, Expense Ratio 0.80%) these new recent highs seem to be in lockstep with new all-time highs here in the SPX (S&P 500 Index) and of course linked ETFs like SPY (SPDR S&P 500, Expense Ratio 0.09%) and IVV (iShares Core S&P 500, Expense Ratio 0.07%). UUP has pulled in north of $200 million in new assets via creation activity year to date, vaulting its asset levels up to about $959 million.
The fund, which debuted in early 2007 continues to be the largest Currency based ETP in the U.S. listed market, however another Dollar related product has quickly climbed up the ladder in the space in accumulating new assets, USDU (WisdomTree Bloomberg U.S. Dollar Bullish, Expense Ratio 0.50%, $263 million AUM).
The climb in the U.S. Dollar seems to have attracted some opportunistic bears here and there as well, as activity in UDN (PowerShares DB U.S. Dollar Index Bearish, Expense Ratio 0.80%) has greatly picked up in the month of December on several robust trading days.
The fund has approximately $43 million in AUM, and averages about 107,000 shares traded daily. Even UUPT (PowerShares DB 3X Long U.S. Dollar Index Futures ETN 0.95%) which toiled with lower average daily trading volume for some time since its May 2011 debut, has seen a nice healthy uptick in daily volume (averaging >25,000 shares traded) although asset levels in the fund remain rather small ($13.8 million).