ETF Spotlight on the FlexShares Morningstar Global Upstream Natural Resource Index Fund (NYSEArca: GUNR), part of an ongoing series.
Assets: $2.9 billion
Objective: The FlexShares Morningstar Global Upstream Natural Resources Index ETF tries to reflect the performance of the Morningstar Global Upstream Natural Resources Index, which tracks global companies involved with energy, metals, water and timberland resources.
Holdings: Top holdings include Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) 5.0%, BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) 4.9%, Monsanto (NYSE: MON) 4.6%, Syngenta 4.0% and RIO Tinto 3.8%.
What You Should Know:
- Northern Trust’s FlexShares sponsors the fund.
- GUNR has a 0.48% expense ratio.
- The ETF has 122 components and the top ten make up 37.6% of the overall portfolio.
- Sector allocations include energy 30.6%, metal 29.8%, agriculture 28.6%, water 5.1% and timber 4.7%.
- Country allocations include U.S. 37.8%, U.K. 20.6%, Canada 13.3%, Australia 6.7%, Switzerland 4.0%, France 3.5%, Norway 1.8%, South Africa 1.8%, Malaysia 1.2% and China 1.1%.
- The fund is up 1.8% over the past month, up 8.9% over the past three months and up 7.4% over the past year.
- GUNR is trading 4.3% above its 200-day exponential moving average.
- The underlying index employs a 30% weight to energy, agriculture and metals, along with a 5% weight to timber and water resources.
- Country exposure is capped at 40% to the U.S. and 20% to emerging markets.
- “Despite their volatility, stocks linked to natural resources can offer meaningful diversification benefits,” according to Morningstar analyst Alex Bryan. “Natural resources are key inputs whose prices inversely affect the profitability of companies in other industries. As the prices of the commodities they or their customers sell rise, natural-resources companies tend to become more profitable, which can also make them a good inflation hedge.”
Next page: The latest news
The Latest News:
- Energy stocks are currently leading resource producers.
- The energy sector can continue to strengthen on expanding global economies, tighter supply, moderate increase in alternative energy and better company management, reports Howard Gold for MarketWatch.
- “Rising demand and depletion of low-cost supply have been pushing energy prices higher,” according to money manager Guinness Atkinson. “This should create a favorable environment for companies with resource reserves and for their service providers and distributors.”
- Gold miners are beginning to cut costs, with Goldcorp stating that all-in sustaing costs were $840 per ounce in the first quarter, down from $1,134 in the same quarter year-over-year, reports Peter Koven for Financial Post.
- “Goldcorp’s solid first quarter results underscore what we expect to be recurring themes in 2014: High quality production growth, excellent cost performance and strong progress toward completion of our three current growth projects,” chief executive Chuck Jeannes said.
FlexShares Morningstar Global Upstream Natural Resource Index Fund
For past stories in this series, visit our ETF Spotlight category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.