Peter F. Way, CFA's  Instablog

Precious metal ETF buys have less to do with the wedding season in India than they do with the US Government's cure-all for every problem: Spend dollars that have to be printed, not gathered from taxation.

Despite the fact that it doesn't seem to be getting either more Swine Flue vaccine on the scene or more mortgage or small business credit available, the trillion-dollar pace of deficit persists.

Perish the idea that it be called inflation, but prices of many things keep going up, including ETFs denominated in dollars.

Expectations of market-makers for ETFs holding either precious metals or stocks of companies that mine the stuff are on the rise, too. That makes several ETFs attractive, odds-on buys at this point.

Most appealing is IAU, the COMEX Gold Trust i-Shares, where volume market-makers see the potential for upside gain of over +10% in the next 3 months, compared to a downside exposure of less than one-quarter of that. Their batting average has been very good, with higher prices following forecasts like the present 78% of the time.

Silver may have an even bigger kick, with SLV, the Silver Trust i-Shares priced to provide an upside of almost +15% in that same time, at an exposure of some -6%. The scorecard here is not as overwhelming, but higher prices 71% of the time after such forecasts is not bad.

Even better odds and bigger price move potentials are present in AGQ, the Proshares Ultra Silver ETF that has (2x) leverage engineered into its holdings structure. There prices have been higher 75% of the time, given current day forecasts, and by 27%, on average. The forecast is only for 23% gains. But leverage has its downside, where the encounter could run to -10%, instead of only half as much at SLV.

The parallel ETF play to the dollar's continuing debasement lies in TBT, whose (2x) internal leverage magnifies the short position it provides in 20-year US Treasury bonds. At a price of $47.89 its forecast of $54.37 indicates a possible gain of +13% with an exposure of only -5.5%

All of these ETFs have better Reward-to-Risk scores than 94% of the 2,000 other equity securities we cover. But don't take too long to decide, their prices are constantly in motion.

Disclosure:  No current positions in IAU, SLV, AGQ or TBT