Below is a list of ETFs making trading at new 52 week highs on Friday, ranked in order of 6 month performance. Leveraged ETFs are included. Gold is one theme on the list, as is technology and 3 international oriented funds made the list, iShares Israel (EIS), iShares United Kingdom (EWU), and Currency Shares Australian Dollar Trust (FXA):

Author's Disclosure: No Positions

The number of funds on ETF Deathwatch edged up to 113 this month from 111 in October. The count consists of 78 ETFs and 35 ETNs that failed to generate at least $100,000 in average daily value traded (ADVT) for the past month.

E-TRACS CMCI Short Platinum Excess Return (PTD) heads the list again this month. I haven’t checked, but my guess is that PTD holds the record for number of times at the top of the list. PTD saw action on only three days in September and did the same in October, with the other 19 days being zero volume days. However, it did manage to boost trading by 100 shares over September, making for 600 total shares traded last month. Although PTD hasn’t traded in a few days, there are shares available for purchase at $34.02 this morning. If you want to sell, the bid is only $33.62.

Christian Magoon is the President and Senior Managing Director of Claymore Securities, Inc. He recently took time out of his busy schedule to talk with ETF Database.

ETFdb: It’s been a good year for the ETF industry, and Claymore in particular. Obviously the equity markets have had a pretty strong rebound in 2009, but also strong cash inflows have increased the size of the ETF market. Data from the National Stock Exchange indicates that Claymore has seen cash inflows of more than $635 million this year. Are there any sectors or funds that you’ve seen as especially popular among investors this year?

When we manage portfolios, we don't like to get fancy. Investing doesn't have to be complicated or complex. If you don't understand it, you probably shouldn't own it.

Here's a portfolio comprised mainly of low cost ETFs that we like for the intermediate to long term. The investment strategy is simple and focused: to hedge against inflation and dollar devaluation. We subscribe to the concept that the best ideas are also the simplest.

The number of ETFs on Deathwatch continues to grow as we enter 2009. My current list contains 139 names: 97 ETFs and 42 ETNs. The list includes any ETF/ETN that is at least six months old and had an Average Daily Value Traded of less than $100,000 in December.

Exchange Trade Notes are suffering from concerns of default risk. The Lehman Brothers (LEHMQ.PK) bankruptcy, which resulted in the demise of three ETNs, is causing investors to hesitate before throwing money into these products. Unless ETN sponsors to take steps to calm investor fears, their representation on the list is likely to grow in the coming months.

There's been a quote from Ron Lieber (not the actor) in a NY Times article making the rounds that I think is very constructive.

He says: Index (mostly). Save a ton. Reallocate infrequently.

If last year was the coming out party for bond exchange-traded funds [ETFs], then 2008 is lining up as the "Year of the Quant Stock ETF."

After years of anticipation, three prospectuses for active equities ETFs were filed in the second half of 2007. In addition, a majority of the 451 ETFs and exchange-traded notes [ETNs] currently on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] involve some form of quantitative or alternative methodology to index construction.

Roger Nusbaum submits: My inner geek is agog over this post from Matt Hougan with all of the ETFs that are in registration. It is the motherlode for this sort of thing.

I am most interested in the State Shares Missouri 50 and the HealthShares GI/Gender Health. Those are not made up funds -- but I am kidding about being interested.

The new funds build on Claymore’s pool of interesting, one-off ETFs, and are:

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Roger Nusbaum submits: The other day I mentioned having a sit down with the designer of the index that will underlie the Patent ETF -- its proper name is the Claymore Ocean Tomo Patent 300 Index Fund (OTP). By the way I think there is a Polish bank by that name.

A couple of thoughts: I think the thing here is the secondary effect. Its history is that it has a 92% correlation to the S&P 500, but averages 300 basis points of outperformance studied over ten years. The focus is on patents, so it occurred to me that chances are not too many financial companies have patents. Turns out that is right. I was told there is only one financial stock in the fund. If you look at where SPX gets its yield, it makes sense that OTP will yield less than S&P 500 Index (SPY). So better price appreciation (per my conversation) but less yield (per my thought process).

Ocean Tomo's index aims to quantify the value of intellectual property owned by companies and then create an index of companies with large intellectual property assets. The index is then further stratified by investment style and company size to create a representative index of universe of companies that rely on intellectual property to create value.

This could be a very interesting tool for people like myself who tend to be hard asset investors. Hard asset investors focus on tangible assets; we tend to be driven by balance sheet value. But it is clear that many companies have "capital intangibles" that are valuable, and at times undervalued.