Daily ETF Watch: Gold, T-Bill ETPs Live

Two exchange-traded products are launching today, one an equity ETF focused on gold miners, and the other an ETN that cherry-picks U.S. Treasury debt across the yield curve.

The gold fund, which will carry the Sprott name that is well known in precious metals circles, is sponsored by ALPS, while the Treasurys ETN is backed by Barclays Plc, one of the biggest issuer banks in the ETN traffic.

The two launches bring the total number of year-to-date offerings to 109 ETFs, and the entire universe of U.S.-listed funds now comes to 1,618 funds, according to ETF.com’s data screener.

Gold Miner ETF Launch

ALPS, the ETF sponsor and fund-industry marketing firm, today launched the Sprott Gold Miners ETF on NYSE Arca at a time when the yellow metal is on the rise due to widespread violence in the Middle East and renewed fears about Portugal’s financial sector.

The new fund, which will trade under the symbol “SGDM,” will be based on an index from Zack’s Index Services, but will carry the well-known Sprott brand. Sprott is a firm known for its investment products focused on precious metals, many of them closed-end funds, and it helped Zack's develop the index methodology.

The Sprott Gold Miners ETF’s index will track the performance of gold and silver mining companies whose stocks are traded on major U.S. exchanges, according to a regulatory filing. Its expense ratio is 0.57 percent, or $57 for every $10,000 invested.

Gold, and gold miners ETFs, are thought of as safe-haven plays. It may help the new ALPS fund that investor fears are a bit stoked, with Israeli-Palestinian violence flaring and one of Portugal’s banks running into trouble. To read more about gold miner ETFs, see read ETF.com’s sector report on global gold miner ETFs.

The launch was made public via a NYSE communique.

ETN Launch

Barclays Bank today is launching the U.S. Treasury Aggregate ETN (TAPR), the latest exchange-traded product designed to offer investors protection from a sell-off in the bond market.

While yields on the 10-year Treasury note have actually fallen this year to around 2.55 percent from 3 percent at the end of 2013, investors remain anxious about the post-crash doldrums giving way to higher yields, and Barclays is offering up a solution.

TAPR will employ short positions across the two-year, five-year, 10-year, long-bond and ultra-long U.S. Treasury futures contracts, according to a regulatory filing. Prices on existing bonds fall when yields rise.

According to the prospectus, the note has a fee of $43 for every $10,000 invested.

The ETN launch was made public via a Nasdaq communique.

Updated Filing

J.P. Morgan has put into registration another smart-beta fund, called the JPMorgan Diversified Return Emerging Markets Equity ETF (JPEM), that has a similar strategy to its maiden offering.

The bank’s much-anticipated JPMorgan Diversified Return Global Equity ETF (JPGE) launched last month, beginning its long-awaited foray into the world of exchange-traded funds that’s widely expected to jump-start the actively managed ETF space.

The launch comes at a time when many industry observers believe that the popularity of actively managed ETFs is possibly on the brink of growing dramatically, though the segment currently inhabits less than 1 percent of the entire ETF market.

The proposed offering will track the FTSE Emerging Diversified Factor Index, which comprises equity securities from emerging markets selected to represent a diversified set of factor characteristics, including value, momentum and quality, according to the regulatory filing.

Fees were not made available in the filing.

Sales & Marketing

Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management announced in a press release yesterday that the db X-trackers Harvest CSI 300 China A-Shares Fund (ASHR | D-52) has been approved for registration by the Comision Calificadora de Riesgo for distribution among Chilean pension funds.

ASHR is the first direct investment in China A-shares to be registered in Chile, according to the firm. It is also a first-to-market fund offering investors access to the highly sought-after mainland China securities, a direct play on the world’s second-largest economy.

Since the launch of ASHR last November, has added other China funds, including:

• db X-trackers Harvest MSCI All China Equity Fund (CN), a broad-based ETF providing investors with exposure to onshore and offshore Chinese equities
• db X-trackers Harvest CSI 500 China A-Shares Small Cap Fund (ASHS), the first U.S.-listed ETF to provide investors with direct access to small-cap China A-shares equities