Five Hottest ETFs from Last Week All Metals Related

I like to publish the prior week's hottest ETFs to share some new trends and niche ETFs out there. As it turns out, this week, the hot ETFs were virtually all metals related, so in this edition, you'll get some exposure to some obscure instruments aside from the standard straight 1x Gold play. A nice side benefit of various metals returns is the lower correlation to equities returns and in some cases, inflationary/global boom correlation. This week, you'll want to watch these Swine Flu Stocks and what happens to major indices as the situation evolves.

AGQ - Up 18.1% - ProShares Ultra Silver - This is a 2X leveraged ETF tracking the return of silver. The ETF was up nicely for the week, but is well off its high from February.

JJT - Up 15.1% - Barclays iPath Tin - This one's actually an ETN which carries ETN specific risks to consider, but as far as I've seen, it's the only pure play on Tin, which rallied significantly last week.

GDX - Up 11.9% - Market Vectors Gold Miners - This is an index of publicly traded companies comprising the AMEX Gold Miners index which includes the majority of major gold and silver mining companies that are publicly traded. Personally, if I'm looking for a gold play, I prefer to buy the underlying investment (GLD is a 1x Gold ETF) rather than subject myself to operational variability of the subject companies. Sometimes the companies outperform gold, sometimes vice versa.

DGP - Up 11.4% - DB Gold Double Long - This is a leveraged play on gold bullion, but note that it's an ETN. The ETN is meant to return double the price movement in gold bullion. See the next item for a more widely traded instrument:

UGL - Up 10.8% - Proshares Ultra Gold - Essentially the same play as DGP, but it's an ETF. While the prospects of a 2x return sound appealing, make sure you're familiar with the ins and outs of leveraged ETFs and the fact that over long periods of time, the shares of these ETFs tend to perform at less than 2x as value is eroded due to daily balancing in volatile markets.

Disclosure: I am long UGL, but my inflationary play hasn't come to fruition as soon as anticipated. I may move into a straight 1X like GLD since the leveraged ETFs don't make the best long term investment due to fees and volatility losses from daily averaging.