Chance Carson

Looking Inside the New Ben Graham ETN Baskets

Rick...Excellent article about ETNs!

Just to clarify, however, there actually ARE 4 ETN's which currently do(or are planning to) pay dividends. (You had mentioned that "ETNs don't pay dividends, interest or capital gains")

The four ETNs which pay dividends are GCE (Goldman Sacks-Claymore CEF Index Linked ETN), BSR (BearLinx Alerian MPL Select ETN) ,PGD (Barclays Asian and Gulf Currency Revaluation ETN) and JEM (Barclays GEMS Index ETN).

GCE invests in a basket of 75 discounted Closed-End Funds following a CEF Index selected by Claymore Securities (claymoresecurities.com). GCE's distribution rate is variable with the past three quarterly dividends being $1.66, $0.28 and $0.64.

BSR is an energy infrastructure play which invests in fifty Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs) which track the "Alerian MPL Select Index" (alerian.com). One unique feature of this ETN is its issuance of a 1099 at year end, rather than the K-1 Partnership tax reports normally associated with individual MLP holdings.

Both PGD and JEM are currencies bundles pegged, to some extent, to the US Dollar, and were just recently brought to market by Barclays on June 18, 2008. PGD includes currencies of the Saudi Arabian riyal, Hong Kong dollar, United Arab Emirates dirham, Singaporean dollar and the Chinese yuan. The GEM bundle will include currency holdings from 15 Global Emerging Markets (hence the symbol, GEM) in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America an Asia. Both PGD and GEM will distribute interest earned on the locally earned currency deposits on a quarterly basis. The rates are yet to be determined. (ipathetn.com)