Dion's Thursday ETF Winners and Losers
NEW YORK (
) -- Welcome to Don Dion's Daily ETF Winners and Losers. Be sure to stop by each day to get a feel of whose winning and who's losing when it comes to ETFs.
Winners
First Trust ISE-Revere Natural Gas Index ETF
(FCG) - Get Report
2.3%
Natural gas producers are soaring today thanks to a massive rally from top holding
Mariner Energy
(ME)
. Shares of the exploration firm jumped over 40% after
Apache
(APA) - Get Report
announced it would purchase the company for $2.7 billion.
Both APA and ME are listed among FCG's holdings, accounting for 3.8% and 3.3% of the fund respectively. More than half of the gain in FCG is a result of the increase in ME.
iShares Dow Jones U.S. Transportation Index Fund
(IYT) - Get Report
2.2%
Strong earnings reports from
JB Hunt
(JBHT) - Get Report
and
United Parcel Service
(UPS) - Get Report
helped power IYT to a top position among Thursday's winners. These companies' stellar reports follow CSX, which reported an excellent quarter earlier this week.
Heading into the near future, IYT may have some more steam left in its run as top holding
Union Pacific
(UNP) - Get Report
reports its earnings on April 22.
Claymore/MAC Global Solar Energy ETF
(TAN) - Get Report
1.3%
Solar and alternative energy ETFs have scored some big wins on Thursday with
First Solar
(FSLR) - Get Report
, the leader of TAN's index, trading nearly 5% higher. FSLR accounts for over 10% of the fund's total index.
Investors should keep a close eye on TAN as it approaches its 200-day moving average, which may prove a point of resistance.
Losers
United States Natural Gas Fund
(UNG) - Get Report
-4.7%
Another Thursday, another EIS inventory report miss and another down day for the infamous UNG. This time natural gas stockpiles saw an increase of 87 bcf versus an analyst estimated 77 bcf increase. The dismal performance sent futures down nearly 3% in early market trading.
iPath Dow Jones-UBS Sugar Total Return Subindex ETN
(SGG) - Get Report
-2.9%
Though the fund has managed to stay off the winners and losers list throughout this week, SGG returned to the losers column on Thursday as a strengthening dollar pushed the price of the sweetener lower.
I would advise investors to steer clear of the fund because an ideal weather forecast for growers should continue to punish the price of this crop.
iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Majors Fund
(ICF) - Get Report
-2.1%
A pessimistic credit outlook for REITs from Fitch Ratings has helped push ICF lower today. Though it is becoming clearer each day that the broader economy is recovering, the agency feels that real estate performance is a lagging economic indicator. In its report, Fitch said that if the recovery is sustainable, REITs will in better shape in the latter half of 2010.
All prices as of 2:15 PM EST
-- Written by Don Dion in Williamstown, Mass.
At the time of publication, Dion was long iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Majors Fund.
Don Dion is president and founder of
, a fee-based investment advisory firm to affluent individuals, families and nonprofit organizations, where he is responsible for setting investment policy, creating custom portfolios and overseeing the performance of client accounts. Founded in 1996 and based in Williamstown, Mass., Dion Money Management manages assets for clients in 49 states and 11 countries. Dion is a licensed attorney in Massachusetts and Maine and has more than 25 years' experience working in the financial markets, having founded and run two publicly traded companies before establishing Dion Money Management.
Dion also is publisher of the Fidelity Independent Adviser family of newsletters, which provides to a broad range of investors his commentary on the financial markets, with a specific emphasis on mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. With more than 100,000 subscribers in the U.S. and 29 other countries, Fidelity Independent Adviser publishes six monthly newsletters and three weekly newsletters. Its flagship publication, Fidelity Independent Adviser, has been published monthly for 11 years and reaches 40,000 subscribers.