We have mentioned rising food prices recently, which have been no doubt spurred on by the severe drought conditions throughout much of the Eastern and Midwestern parts of the United States.
As would be expected, Agricultural linked ETFs such as PowerShares DB Agriculture (NYSEArca: DBA) which is made up of futures contracts which track commodities including Coffee, Soybeans, Wheat, Corn, and others have rallied sharply in the first few weeks of July.
Some ETFs that are related in a sense, but are not directly linked because they do not invest in agricultural commodity futures but instead shares of companies that participate in the “Agribusiness” sector, are IndexIQ Global Agribusiness Small Cap (NYSEArca: CROP), Market Vectors Agribusiness (NYSEArca: MOO), PowerShares Global Agriculture (NasdaqGM: PAGG) and iShares MSCI Global Agriculture Producers (NYSEArca: VEGI).
Additionally, for those looking to leverage long and short bets on a short term speculative basis, or hedge aggressively, Direxion Daily Agribusiness Bull 3X (NYSEArca: COWL) and Direxion Daily Agribusiness Bear 3X (NYSEArca: COWS) offer 3 times daily leveraged exposure.
With DBA for instance roughly flat for the year (+1.14%) but up 10.85% in the past month alone, clearly some momentum has swung back into the Ag space. YTD comparatively, PAGG has rallied 4.65%, versus CROP’s gain of 3.67% and MOO rising 3.56%. VEGI only launched in February of this year, and since inception the fund is down 5.66%.