Friday’s ETF Spotlight

Every Friday WP takes a look at the five best-performing ETFs for the past week. Are any of them in your clients’ portfolios?

Every Friday WP takes a look at the five best-performing ETFs for the past week. Are any of them in your clients’ portfolios?

1. Horizons Enhanced Income Gold Producers ETF (HEP.A) – up 13.6%

Gold ETFs had another good week with one of Horizon’s funds beating out iShares, a reversal from last week’s results. Investing in a total of 13 gold producers, HEP.A writes covered call options on all of its equity holdings to reduce the downside risk of the portfolio while also generating income.

2. Horizons Natural Gas Yield ETF (HNY) – up 6.1%

Horizons had a good week. HNY invests in natural gas futures hedged to the Canadian dollar. Like HEP.A it uses a covered call strategy to mitigate risk. Natural gas prices rose this week on forecasts the weather is about to get colder.

3. iShares India Index ETF (XID) – up 5.6%

India appears to be on the mend. Just this week economist Paul Krugman referred to the emerging market as “a country of the future.” Investing in 53 of the largest companies based in India, it does so through the NYSE Arca-listed iShares India 50 ETF (INDY). Expect more good things in 2015.

4. First Asset Morningstar US Momentum Index ETF (YXM.D) – up 5.4%

It’s not surprising that ETFs investing in U.S. equities are doing well early in 2015. All three of our experts pointed to the U.S. markets as a big ETF trend in 2015. Unhedged, this particular fund invests in 50 of the biggest stocks trading on a U.S. exchange. Equal weighted and rebalanced quarterly investors are attracted to the Morningstar name.

5. iShares MSCI EAFE Minimum Volatility Index ETF (XMI) – up 3.5%

Another observation from our experts that appears to be playing itself out is the idea that investors are looking for safer havens. When it comes to equities whether it’s domestic or international they definitely want to ratchet down the risk. XMI looks for stocks that possess lower volatility relative to the MSCI EAFE index. While this is international in nature look for investors to gravitate to the version investing in low volatility U.S. equities and the XMU. 

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