With international currencies in the daily headlines lately amidst the ongoing European unrest, a currency related exchange traded fund, PowerShares DB G10 Currency Harvest Fund (NYSEArca: DBV), has seen trading activity recently that is noteworthy.
Nearly 1.2 million shares traded in DBV late last week versus average daily trading volume of about 276,000 shares with the ETF hovering in between its 50 and 200 day moving averages.
DBV is designed to track the Deutsche Bank G10 Currency Future Harvest Index, which invests in futures contracts on select G10 currencies. Historically, currencies that are tied to relatively high interest rates tend to increase in value relative to those currencies that are linked with relatively low interest rates, and thus the index is set up to capture this effect.
Thus, the fund is enabled to own both long and short positions simultaneously in various currencies through the use of futures.
Currently, DBV has long positions in the Australian Dollar, the Norwegian Krone, and the New Zealand Dollar (33.54%, 33.35%, and 31.94% weightings respectively) and short positions in the Swiss Franc, the Japanese Yen, and the U.S. Dollar (-32.59%, -33.45%, and -33.61% weightings respectively).