Forex Power Trading Course

Monday, January 18, 2010

The ABCs of Inverse Exchange-Traded Funds

By Jeffrey Jackson

A great ETF is an inverse exchange-traded fund and is traded on the public stock market. These funds work through diverse leveraged investment tips such as short selling, trading derivatives, and futures contracts. They aim to perform opposite of whichever index being tracked.

Setting aside the impact of fees and other costs along with providing opposite results over a short period of time, inverse ETFs give a similar result to short selling the stock in the index. Since they are designed to rise in a falling market, these funds become even more popular during a soft market. For example the goal of and inverse S&P ETF would be to move opposite of that of the S&P.

Short sales can sink an investor to unlimited losses, whether an ETF or ordinary stock. On the other hand, a reverse ETF offers many of the same advantage of shorting, but the investor only loses the purchase price. Reverse ETFs are also able to be held in IRA account, short sales are not permitted.

Under a variety of long-term situations investors can benefit from inverse ETFs. For example, in a soft market, using inverse ETFs can hedge their investment against big losses. If a long-term investor realizes a large paper gain, they can avoid paying taxes by investing in these types of funds.

Using inverse ETF strategies requires investors to continually change their strategy to have good gains. Usually this means more trades need to take place. There are experts that blame increased volatility on this strategy, many other experts disagree and say it has little to no impact.

Inverse ETFs typically have higher costs than that of standard ETFs. Most of these funds are actively managed, which means higher broker commissions. If not closely monitored, costs can get out of control and eat away at gains. - 23310

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