This Week's ETF Winners & Losers: Energy Sapped
Exchange-traded funds tracking energy were among the decliners this week despite an extraordinarily strong week for crude-oil futures.
Crude prices gathered an enormous amount of upward momentum this week and, in quick succession, smashed past the $130 and the $135 marks before easing to a 4.6% surge at $132.19 a barrel. Amid those moves, however, oil-and-gas giants
Exxon Mobil
(XOM) - Get Report
and
ConocoPhillips
(COP) - Get Report
each lost ground for the week as investors ended the week with profit-taking.
The
Oil Service HOLDRs
(OIH) - Get Report
ETF was off 3.2% for the week,
Energy Select Sector SPDR
(XLE) - Get Report
sank 3%, and
iShares Dow Jones U.S. Energy Sector
(IYE) - Get Report
gave up 2%.
At the same time, concerns over rising fuel prices stuck it to transportation stocks, and the
iShares Dow Jones Transportation Average
(IYT) - Get Report
surrendered 4.2% over the past five sessions.
The
SPDR S&P Homebuilders
(XHB) - Get Report
fund, meanwhile, plummeted 12.1% over the past week. Friday saw miserable existing-home sales data come to light, with the National Association of Realtors saying the housing backlog is at a 23-year high. Also, on Thursday, the Office of Federal Housing Administration said home prices suffered their worst quarterly drop on record last quarter, according to its purchase-only house-price index.
Financial-space ETFs were also particularly hard hit in a week that saw Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney predict that banks will take writedowns of at least another $170 billion by the end of next year, and that the effects of the credit crisis could linger even past 2009. Also earlier this week,
The Wall Street Journal
said that some banks' hedging strategies -- betting against funds tracking real estate and leveraged loans, for instance -- have backfired amid recovering U.S. shares this quarter.
The paper cited
Lehman Brothers
(LEH)
and
Morgan Stanley
(MS) - Get Report
as among those hurt by that tactic. Shares of the firms plunged 17.3% and 11.4%, respectively.
The
Financial Select Sector SPDR
(XLF) - Get Report
lost 6.7% since Monday;
Ultra Financials ProShares
(UYG) - Get Report
tumbled 10.9%;
Vanguard Financials ETF
(VFH) - Get Report
shed 5.3%; and
iShares Dow Jones U.S. Financial
(IYF) - Get Report
was off 5.5%.
Among suffering individual names,
Dow
financial components
Citigroup
(C) - Get Report
,
Bank of America
(BAC) - Get Report
, and
JPMorgan Chase
(JPM) - Get Report
, slid at least 6.2% apiece.
On the lonely upside were gold-related ETFs, which gained ground for the week as futures on the metal glided higher by nearly 3% on a weakening U.S. dollar. The
iShares COMEX Gold Trust
(IAU) - Get Report
and the
SPDR Gold Trust
(GLD) - Get Report
have risen 2.4% over the past five sessions, and
Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF
(GDX) - Get Report
is better by 0.9%.