It has been just a week since European Central Bank President Mario Draghi gave financial markets what they were hoping for when he announced the ECB will commence an asset-buying program initially valued at $1.3 trillion.
Predictably, the ECB news has helped some diversified Europe exchange traded funds notch modest gains. For example, the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF (NYSEArca: VGK) and the WisdomTree Europe Hedged Equity Fund (NYSEArca: HEDJ) are each up about 0.8% over the past week. If inflows data are an accurate gauge (sometimes that is the case, sometimes it is not), investors and traders are betting on even more upside to come for Europe ETFs.
Some risk-tolerant traders are making those bets with the Direxion Daily FTSE Europe 3x Bull Shares (NYSEArca: EURL). EURL, which debuted in January 2014, attempts to deliver three times the daily performance of the FTSE Developed Europe Index, the underlying benchmark for VGK. [Leveraged Europe ETF in the Spotlight]
EURL is up about 2% over the past week and the ETF has surged 9.3% over the past month, enough to prompt a flood of new interest in the leveraged fund. Since the ECB announcement, EURL’s shares outstanding count has soared by 57.1%. Just this week, 200,000 new shares in EURL have been created, bringing the ETF’s shares outstanding tally to 550,000. Based on EURL’s current market price of about $31.50, that shares outstanding count means the ETF is now home to more than $173 million in assets under management.
Turnover data confirm traders’ sudden interest in EURL. Over the five-day period ending Jan. 28, EURL’s average volume was about 126% above the trailing 20-day average, according to Direxion data. That volume increase was well ahead of any of the other leveraged ETFs sponsored by Direxion.
Importantly, EURL has done an admirable job of delivering on its stated objective of delivering three times the daily returns of the FTSE Developed Europe Index. Over the 30-day period ending Jan. 28, EURL’s variance to triple the performance of its underlying index is just 0.73%, according to issuer data.
Direxion Daily FTSE Europe 3x Bull Shares
