David Rosenberg put out a report that focuses on why he believes commodities are in a secular bull market with many more years to run. I would suggest you read the report (.pdf - you will have to register if you have not done so already). I wanted to focus one narrow point that I think is a tie in with a point I have been making here for a long time.

Rosenberg believes that the commodity bull favors Canadian equities over US equities. The line of thinking is easy to follow. Canada is a commodity based economy and the stock market there has a heavier weighting to energy and materials companies.

Despite the title of this post I'm sure that most people that have read my stuff know that I am a huge fan of ETFs. They allow people willing to spend the time to build very sophisticated portfolios that by and large avoid single stock risk. The broader funds allow for simple and cheap beta for people who for whatever reason do not build portfolios with narrower funds in the capacity I write about.

All that noted, there are drawbacks to the product -- every product has drawbacks. One written about previously is that it can be more difficult to capture a good dividend yield. Some of the "dividend" ETFs are (were?) heavy in financials and quite a few of the WisdomTree funds have very lumpy dividends.

I previously offered screen results for high yield ETFs trading above their 200 day moving average and with an average volume of greater then 50k. The response was well received so below are the results of a screen for ETFs with a yield of 7% or greater with no volume or trend requirement.

As I stated previously, many on the list can be especially volatile. Generally, the higher the dividend yield the more volatile the security and at-risk is the dividend (the market is not going to give something for nothing). In addition, many companies are cutting dividends during this difficult period, which means when it comes time for an equity based ETF to pay out its next dividend, the payment could be less then it has paid in the past.

Paul Amery writing for Index Universe wrote a fascinating piece on dividend trends in European markets. In fact, those dividend trends likely mirror changes in company distributions clear across developed market segments.

Some findings come as no surprise; that is, the once lofty expectation for 7%-8% yield from European banks has been cut by half. (And that's not saying anything about the extreme depreciation of bank shares over the last 3 years.)

Many of our readers at AboutETFs.com enjoyed our earlier article The Complete List of Currency ETFs and have been requesting a similar list for commodities. So, once again, by popular demand, here is our newest list, The Complete List of Commodity ETFs and ETNs, as of October 20, 2008.

COMMODITY BASKETS (All Commodities)

Part of being a good trader involves game planning possible market outcomes based upon external events. I picked up this investing habit at the tender age of 18 after reading about it in the book, Liars Poker. In the book, the traders would go back and forth with different external scenarios and would quiz each other on the best trading strategies to profit from them.

The world is always changing, and having at least a loose idea of what areas will be affected by certain predictable changes, helps to clear the investment fog tremendously. The military engages in similar exercises, game planning their response and the enemy's counter response based upon any number of scenarios.

Netherlands ETF Gives Heineken Cold Shoulder And Warms Up To Renewable Energy

It has always bothered me. Why should one be led to believe that he/she is investing in a multi-faceted stock market like Canada, yet achieve no difference from having invested in a U.S. energy fund? (Read more about "interchangeable funds" with countries like Canada, South Africa and Taiwan.)

From March 15 to October 15 of 2007, for example, there was a near perfect correlation between the movement of the iShares Canada Fund (EWC) and that of the S&P Select Energy SPDR (XLE). In effect, a vote for Canada was a vote for "Big Energy."

The year ahead has Tobias Levkovich thinking in eights. Citigroup’s (C) chief U.S. equity strategist provided clients with eight key concerns, eight unasked questions and eight plausible and interesting outcomes to consider for 2008.

The concerns:

Stagflation.

A global recession.

Presidential elections in the U.S.

Energy costs.

Counterparty risks in the financial sector.

A plunging greenback.

Sharp declines for home prices.

The apparent ineffectiveness of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s actions.

The numbers don't lie. The more exposure that an investor has had to foreign stock assets in 2007, the more he/she has seen his portfolio prosper.

Yet, in the middle of the global credit crisis, there were a number of high-to-low drawdowns of 20%, 25%, 30%. Those losses are bearish and, for most investors, not worth the drama.

I found an interesting post from Jim Wiandt in the IndexUniverse blog section about iShares MSCI EAFE Fund (EFA). He was at some sort of ETF conference and he remarked about the buzz created when Steven Schoenfeld said that EAFE was obsolete - so by extension I take that to mean he thinks EFA is obsolete.

Um, I've kind of been saying the same thing for a couple of years now. The first instance I found in the archives of writing EFA was not a great way to capture foreign diversification was June 28, 2005. There have been many other instances here and once or twice for RealMoney.com. I doubt Jim reads my stuff and I further doubt Steven has ever heard of me, but still...

Global Energy ETFs
iShares S&P Global Energy Sector Index Fund (IXC)

WisdomTree International Sector Funds
WisdomTree International Basic Materials Sector Fund (DBN)
WisdomTree International Communications Sector Fund (DGG)
WisdomTree International Consumer Cyclical Sector Fund (DPC)
WisdomTree International Consumer Non-Cyclical Fund (DPN)
WisdomTree International Energy Sector Fund (DKA)
WisdomTree International Financial Sector Fund (DRF)
WisdomTree International Health Care Sector Fund (DBR)
WisdomTree International Industrial Sector (DDI)
WisdomTree International Technology Sector Fund (DBT)
WisdomTree International Utilities Sector Fund (DBU)

Roger Nusbaum submits: Paul Farrell had an interesting article on MarketWatch about a possible evolution of lazy portfolios.

In the article Farrell cited a version of a lazy portfolio put forth by Jeremy Siegel using WisdomTree funds. What I think is evolutionary is someone at Farrell's readership level allowing for the possibility that something new could be better. As a hasty generalization, it seems like a lot of the financial journalism luminaries are slow to embrace new things.

Roger Nusbaum submits: Long time reader Russell120 sent me a copy of John Mauldin's newsletter entitled CAPM is Crap, which is an attempt to turn the ideas of Alpha and Beta upside down.

Among other things was a chart that showed taking on higher beta does not result in higher returns. The article also has some positive things to say about fundamental indexing.

This first interview is with Luciano Siracusano, Director of Research for ETF firm WisdomTree Asset Management, which has sponsored the interview. It works like this:

Roger Nusbaum submits: Some good questions from Seeking Alpha contributor Richard Kang about the cornucopia of new ETFs listed or in the pipeline:

He asks for my opinion about WisdomTree method of dividend weighting compared to PowerShares RAFI funds which scores companies by sales, income, book value and dividends. I just did a write up for TSCM about the Rydex equal weight sector ETFs. In the course of writing that article I saw that most of the RAFI sector funds look a lot like the Sector SPDRs in terms of weighting a $200 or $300 billion at 20% of the fund or thereabouts. These lopsided funds are quickly fading as being the best choice.

Roger Nusbaum submits: Earlier this week I swapped out of BP PLC (BP) and into WisdomTree International Energy Fund (DKA). This was something I had been thinking about doing for a couple of weeks. BP has been struggling for several reasons. I think for the short term, 6-9 months, BP may not be able to outperform the sector.

If this turns out to be correct, taking the singe stock risk is not ideal. If this turns out to be incorrect and BP goes up a lot I would expect DKA to benefit as BP is weighted at 9% of the fund.