Winners & Losers

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This Week's ETF Winners & Losers

Sarina Penn

Exchange-traded funds tracking the financial sector were among the biggest winners this week, propelled by the Federal Reserve's decision to cut its overnight lending rate by another quarter-point to 2%.

The Ultra Financials ProShares (UYG Quote) had a particularly good week, surging 5.2% since Monday.

At the same time, the Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF Quote), the Vanguard Financials ETF (VFH Quote), the iShares Dow Jones U.S. Financial Sector (IYF Quote) fund and the iShares S&P Global Financials (IXG Quote) ETF each added 2.3% or more.

The central bank provided further cushion to financials Friday when it ratcheted up its term auction facility by 50% to $150 billion, meaning banks will have that much more money available for borrowing.

Since Monday, two of the Dow's financial components -- Bank of America (BAC Quote) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM Quote) -- added 3.9% and 1.8%, respectively, though Citigroup (C Quote) ticked 0.8% lower, weighed down by this week's news that it would offer $4.5 billion in stock.

Suffering the flip-side of the Fed's decision were commodities-related ETFs. Among the worst-performing energy ETFs were Oil Services HOLDRs (OIH Quote), PowerShares Dynamic Oil & Gas Services (PXJ Quote), United States Oil (USO Quote) and iShares Dow Jones U.S. Energy (IYE Quote). All have sunk at least 2.1% apiece over the past five sessions.

Those declines came despite climbs at Chevron (CVX Quote) and BP (BP Quote), which both reported higher profits this week on the back of the oil boom, and for the week were up 2.8% and 4.4%, respectively.

Exxon Mobil (XOM Quote) was a notable exception, sliding 3.1% since Monday after failing to hit analyst estimates for the first quarter, despite a surging bottom line.

As for gold, the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX Quote) slid 4.7% for the week, while the iShares COMEX Gold Trust (IAU Quote) and the streetTRACKS Gold Shares (GLD Quote) fund each dropped 3.1%.