Rare is the hamburger unaccompanied by French fries or a baseball game without beer and a hot dog. Some things just go together.
Exchange traded funds issuers have picked up on that idea, combining multiple investment themes into single funds. Many of these multi-theme funds are still infancy, so time will tell if the combination idea proves valid among investors, but some member of this ETF genre have legitimate potential. The PowerShares Europe Currency Hedged Low Volatility Portfolio (NYSEArca: FXEU), which came to market last month, is a place to start.
As its name implies, FXEU combines an ETF theme that PowerShares has mastered – low volatility – with the red hot currency hedged concept. [A new ETF for two hot Themes]
“Do investors need really need less volatility when hedging their currency exposure? Currency hedging already lowers volatility. The jury is still out on whether that is overkill, but since its launch, FXEU is up 2.7 percent,” writes Eric Balchunas for Bloomberg.
As Balchunas reports, FXEU has another advantage: Its 0.25% annual fee makes it by far the least expensive currency hedged ETF on the market today. FXEU’s 80 holdings are the members of the S&P Eurozone BMI Index to form the S&P Eurozone Low Volatility USD Hedged Index that displayed the lowest volatility over the trailing 12-months. A similar methodology serves as the backstop for the wildly successful PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility Portfolio (NYSEArca: SPLV). [Surprises in Low Vol ETFs]
Earlier this quarter, PowerShares combined low volatility with another prominent theme: Hedging interest rate risk. The result is the PowerShares ex- Rate Sensitive Low Volatility Portfolio (NYSEArca: XRLV). Investors seem to like the XRLV story as the ETF has accumulated nearly $29 million in assets since coming to market on April 9. [Two Worlds Collide in a new ETF]
The new ETF tracks the S&P 500 Low Volatility Rate Response Index. The Index is composed of the 100 constituents of S&P 500 Index that exhibit both low volatility and low interest rate risk,” according to PowerShares.
Speaking of combining currency hedging with other investment ideas, Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management (Deutsche AWM) brought that idea to the industry level with the April launches of the Deutsche X-trackers Dow Jones Hedged International Real Estate ETF (NYSEArca: DBRE) and Deutsche X-trackers S&P Hedged Global Infrastructure ETF (NYSEArca: DBIF). The new ETFs are the first currency-hedged real estate and infrastructure ETFs that allow investors to access global markets. [Industry Currency Hedged ETFs]
PowerShares S&P 500 ex-Rate Sensitive Low Volatility Portfolio
