There has been accelerated bearish put activity in a retail-sector ETF, SPDR S&P Retail (NYSEArca: XRT), as investors gear up for earnings season.
XRT takes an S&P based equal weighted approach that is periodically rebalanced as stocks run or fall, to the U.S. Retail equity segment of the market, and currently its top weightings are: EXPE (1.62%), TRIP (1.57%), and CHRS (1.40%).
Year to date, XRT has fared very well, having rallied 14.20% and slightly outpacing peer Retail equity ETF Market Vectors Retail (NYSEArca: RTH) which is up 14.11% YTD.
RTH is designed to track the Market Vectors US Listed Retail 25 Index which tracks the performance of the 25 largest U.S. listed Retail companies.
RTH has a clearly large cap bias when compared to the equal weighted XRT, as top holdings currently in RTH are WMT (11.46%), AMZN (9.24%), and HD (8.70%).
PowerShares also offers a fund in this space, PowerShares Dynamic Retail (NYSEArca: PMR). This approach is fundamentally/quantitatively based, as the index screens U.S. Retail equities for metrics such as fundamental growth, timeliness, and stock valuation for instance.
The ETF has rallied 13.57% year to date. Furthermore, for traders looking to leverage exposure to both the bullish and bearish side of the Russell 1000 Retail Index, Direxion Daily Retail Bear 3X (NYSEArca: RETS) and Direxion Daily Retail Bull 3X (NYSEArca: RETL) are available and can be used by aggressive short term speculators and/or hedgers.
SPDR S&P Retail
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