A New Way to Play Lumber

That's pretty low for this sector. Many of the stocks in the fund yield considerably more. So you are faced with a tradeoff: Buy the fund and take less risk, or buy an individual stock, like Weyerhaeuser, and collect a 3.4% yield with more risk.

Timber exposure slots into the materials sector in a diversified portfolio, and obviously CUT is more of a foreign holding. I believe it will offer low-beta diversification.

However, at this point I wonder if the fund's back-tested outperformance is attributable the outperformance of the materials sector and the overall performance of foreign markets during the time studied.

As I have previously disclosed, I own Plum Creek, and I own it for all the reasons that Claymore has created this fund. While I think lumber companies are a fine segment to invest in it is important to reiterate that owning CUT or any of its component stocks is unlikely to have the same impact on a portfolio as owning timberland or lumber futures.