Wednesday, 4 January 2012

White hot investing with precious metals

By Ed Cliff


How can exposure to commodities, especially precious metals help your portfolio? One main reason is that commodities are not correlated to stocks or bonds. This gives you a leg up in diversifying your retirement portfolio. Commodity ETFs are just as liquid as stocks or bonds, and many have extremely competitive share prices, allowing even small investors to get their feet wet in the commodities market.

And some of the best ways to invest in commodities are through the use of exchange traded funds (ETFs). These investing funds trade like stocks so they allow you to trade throughout the day.

Below are a few commodity ETFs from the precious metal sector.

ETFS Physical Platinum Shares (PPLT). The largest physically backed platinum based commodity ETF on the market, this ETF holds over $600 million in physical platinum bullion.

ETFS Physical White Metal Basket Shares (WITE). White has $45 million in assets and it is physically backed by hoildings of the three ''white'' precious metals. The investment seeks to reflect the performance of the prices of physical silver, platinum and palladium, in the proportions held by the Trust, less the Trust"s expenses. The fund represents beneficial interest in the trust, which in turn holds physical allocated silver, platinum and palladium bullion held in vaults by the custodian (JP Morgan Chase Bank).

UBS E-TRACS CMCI Gold Total Return ETN (UBG). Issued by UBS, this smaller commodities ETF with $9 million in assets is a futures based fund.

As you can see there are lots of investing options out there when choosing to invest in a commodity ETF. Make sure you do your homework and your portfolio will sing!




About the Author:



No comments: