This Week's ETF Winners & Losers
Utility-related exchange-traded funds suffered the most in a largely down week for the market, as high bond yields soured investor interest in the sector.
Utility stocks are normally attractive to investors for their steady dividends, but became less desirable as investors turned to bonds, as yields rose over 5% to their highest level in five years. Bond yields' rise subsided Friday, but not before sinking utility stocks like
Exelon
(EXC) - Get Report
and
PG&E
(PCG) - Get Report
, each of which lost nearly 7% for the week.
The
Ultra Utilities ProShares
(UPW) - Get Report
lost $10.40, or 12%, to $78.84 for the week.
Utilities HOLDRs
(UTH)
sunk $7.54, or 5.1%, to $140.16. The
iShares Dow Jones US Utilities
(IDU) - Get Report
shed $5.03, or 5%, to $96.39.
Real estate funds also suffered in a poor market, hurt by rising interest rates and poor performance by the sector's biggest names. The 30-year mortgage rate rose to its highest level in 10 months on Thursday and homebuilders
Lennar
(LEN) - Get Report
and
Toll Brothers
(TOL) - Get Report
both lost ground for the week.
Ultra Real Estate ProShares
(URE) - Get Report
lost $5.63, or 9%, to $57.05.
SPDR Homebuilders
(XHB) - Get Report
sunk $1.31, or 3.7%, to $33.86.
Winners for the week were few and far between.
Oil-related funds performed well for much of the week, before being battered into weekly negative territory on Friday. Investor fears over the potential impact a deadly cyclone in the Persian Gulf would have on the energy market drove futures up much of the week. But crude prices dove more than $2 a barrel Friday, when the storm turned out to spare major oil infrastructure in the Middle East.
PowerShares DB Oil
(DBO) - Get Report
edged down 40 cents, or 1.5%, to $26.03. The
iPath Goldman Sachs Crude Oil Index
(OIL) - Get Report
ETF slipped 27 cents, or 0.7%, to $36.03.
One winner was the
PowerShares DB Agriculture
(DBA) - Get Report
, which edged up 4 cents, or 0.2%, to $26.43 for the week.
