The Contrarian Case for "Speculative" ETFs (DBC, EEM, GLD, IWC, SLV, USO)

Excerpt from our One Page Annotated Wall Street Journal Summary (which you can get emailed to you every morning by signing up here):

In Major Shift, Investment Pros Lose Their Appetite for Risk

• Summary: Professional investors are moving money out of asset classes driven by short term speculation, such as gold, commodities, real estate, small caps and emerging market stocks, into asset classes perceived as higher quality or less risky such as large caps and developed foreign markets.
• Comment on related stocks/ETFs: The article is largely backward-looking, because most of the money managers quoted in the article have discussed asset shifts they have already made, and many of the more speculative asset classes, such as gold and emerging market stocks, are already down sharply from their highs earlier this year. The article therefore provides little predictive value, unless the managers cited are first movers at the start of a longer lasting trend. In fact, this article may be evidence that sentiment about commodities and emerging markets has bottomed. If that's the case, a smart contrarian move would be to buy those "speculative" asset classes via ETFs: the iShares Emerging Market Index ETF (EEM), the streetTRACKS Gold ETF (GLD), the iShares Silver ETF (SLV), the iShares Microcap Index ETF (IWC), the US Oil ETF (USO) and the Deutsche Bank Commodity Index Tracking Fund ETF (DBC).