Saturday, October 22, 2011

ETF Chart of the Day: Gasoline

October 21st at 10:35am by Paul Weisbruch, Street One Financial

One of the better performing commodity based exchange traded funds in 2011 is U.S. Gasoline Fund (NYSEArca: UGA), which is up 15.39% year to date.

The ETF is designed to track the price of gasoline as measured by NYMEX traded gasoline futures contracts.

The fund has followed a fairly volatile path this year, as one can see from looking at a simple chart that the price of the fund has quickly seesawed from the low to mid $50s a share only to fall to the $45 range, and then sharply rebound back into the $50s range again on multiple occasions this year.

Trading volume tends to be sporadic in this fund, with average daily volume tallying about 81,000 shares, but the product is relatively easy to trade in size if executed properly.

UGA will likely appeal to managers that are employing a commodity based strategy in their portfolios, or CTAs (Commodity Trading Advisors) that are investing in commodity futures, forwards, or swaps as a way to supplement their strategies using an ETF.

Additionally, we believe that companies that are involved in the consumption of gasoline (such as trucking companies, airlines, charter bus companies, etc.) can likely effectively use UGA as a hedging tool against possible price rises in gasoline.

From a technical standpoint, UGA is at a congestion point as its 50 and 200 day moving averages are converging (with a 50-day moving average of $48.87 and a 200-day moving average of $48.77, while the fund closed at $48.59), so we will monitor short term activity in the fund closely for a sense of the near term immediate direction in gasoline prices and the fund itself.

For more information on Street One ETF research and ETF trade execution/liquidity services, contact pweisbruch@streetonefinancial.com.

Source: http://www.etftrends.com

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