ProShares UltraShort and UltraLong ETFs

Market participants know that the ProShares Short and UltraShort ETFs have become wildly popular.  These ETFs allow investors with long-only accounts to easily bet against the market or hedge their bets.  The ProShares Ultra ETFs provide either double or double the inverse of the daily returns of the asset classes they track.  In the current market environment, the UltraShort ETFs have been huge winners.

For those interested, below we highlight all of the ETFs currently offered by ProShares.  We also include the year-to-date performance of each one, along with its current percentage from its 50-day moving average (to measure overbought/oversold levels).  As shown, the Ultrashort Financial ETF (SKF) is up a whopping 67% year to date, as financial firms have fallen across the board.  SKF is trailed by the Ultrashort Semiconductors (SSG), Ultrashort Russell 1,000 Value (SJF), and Ultrashort Dow30 (DXD) as far as year-to-date performance is concerned.

Because the ETFs attempt to track the daily performance of the underlying indices, the longer-term performances can get out of whack.  Not taking dividends into account, the Ultrashort Oil&Gas ETF (DUG) is down 12.45% year to date, but the Ultra (long) Oil&Gas ETF (DIG) is down 7.29%.

  

Comments

[Ames Tiedeman:]

Great list. Thanks for the data.

2008 Jul 13 10:59 PM

[Franck:]

Thanks for the article.

I think the Proshares ETF are not reliable.

Let's take the example of FXP. They are not double short but only 1.7 short.

The prices are very inconsistent.

For example:

I bought FXP on March 6th at 99. That day, FXI closed 135.66.

On March 24th, FXP was at 106.92 and FXI 128.35 (same as today).

Today FXP closed at 87.98 and FXI closed at 128.66

2008 Jul 15 05:06 PM

[Ames Tiedeman:]

QID and QLD have been very reliable at 2x.

2008 Jul 15 07:20 PM

[cc:]

I wish you would look into QID and why it is never and I mean NEVER 2X the inverse.. I checked out Rydex shares and all their inverse etf's perform grea on a daily basis.. THIS piece of $@^$ is so bad.. Check out what the underlying was when this was trading 57.. THe ndx is lower now and this should be trading close 49 to 52,, Do we have any recourse against Proshares?

2008 Jul 18 04:21 PM

[ProHFAnalyst:]

UYG what am I not getting here? It says it tracks the DJUSFN index, with 2x the return. DJUSFN is up 6.07% today. So UYG should be up 12.14%. However as we speak UYG is up a measly 2.2%.

2008 Sep 30 11:31 AM