I saw Susannah's comment concerning a possible ETF on the english exchange for cotton. Does anyone know or have a list of ETF's that are based on a one tenth relationship between the futures price and the ETF price the same way Crude has the OSU or Silver having the SLV. Even if its an ETF based on a combination of corn, beans, and wheat or beans, meal, and oil. Just whatever. Cocoa, Coffee, Lumber. Any info would be very much appreciated.
I got your PM, guess I'll just reply here. I think this is probably a pretty complete list: http://etf.stock-encyclopedia.com/category/agriculture-crop-price-etfs.html The cotton ETF is available on IB, it's at the LSE (London stock exchange). I've never bought a stock that is denominated in another currency, but I assume on something like cotton, since the underlying asset is based in dollars, that will take care of the currency fluctuation and your absolute value in dollars would fluctuate like it would if you were in a futures contract. I'll need to look at the chart though and I haven't subscribed to the data yet (5 pounds/month).
RJA - ELEMENTS Linked to the Rogers International Commodity Index - Agriculture Total Return http://www.elementsetn.com/pdfs/ELEMENTS-RJA.pdf
In the US you have DBA, which is corn, wheat, soybeans and sugar. In Europe you have etfsecurities.com, which have a whole range of commodities. One aspect to keep in mind is that these are not classical ETFs, but notes, as in debt instruments, and some of them have credit risk. For example, when AIG got into trouble, some of these got hammered (agricultural in particular) because AIG guarantees them, later they did recover though. Others that guaranteed by the actual physical commodity, like gold and silver, were OK.
Does anyone know US ETFs/instruments w/o credit risk mentioned above??? Ideally they should just hold several fut contracts and keep rolling them over. W/O use if any leverage.
As long as it is an genuine ETF structure it shouldn't be an issue. The problem I mentioned above is applicable specifically to those issued by etfsecurities, since those are not exchange-traded funds, but exchange-traded notes. It has nothing to do with other ETFs. DBA, which is a US ETF, is a fund so I don't think there's a credit risk issue with it.