Jefferies Global Commodity Equity ETF (CRBQ) Celebrates Its One Year Anniversary In Style

The Jefferies Global Commodity Equity Index ETF

has had quite a run up to celebrate its one year anniversary in late September. This was the first global commodity equity ETF on the market, and it through its first year being traded it has been met with little fanfare. Average daily trading volume is only 14,000 shares, with total assets at only $68M. Unknown and under-utilized as it is, I believe it can serve as a nice niche investment security in some portfolios. Most commodity securities are ETNs (which have credit risk) and produce no income or are expensive derivative based ETFs which also have no income and require constant restructuring of the futures contracts to retain the desired exposure. These are tough products for me to hold as a long term investment as they are expensive, have no income, and do not have the long term ‘capital appreciation' capacity as equity displays over time. The Jefferies ETF however is a collection of 149 global companies (67% of the fund is international) which derive their revenue from all realms of the commodity sector. 39% of the fund is allocated to agriculture, 37% to energy/oil, 13% to precious metals, and 12% to base/industrial metals. A nicely diversified commodity play. And the kicker is you own equity; a solid income producing long term investment (if the price is right of course). Yes, correlation of the fund is tied both to commodities and the general equity market, but the somewhat reduced diversification benefit will be worth it to many. The yield is not significant at roughly 1%, but it is better than a negative carrying cost or near zero yields associated with most commodity securities. Even though many investors are not around to help celebrate, the fund just had its 1 year anniversary in late September and is up 27% in the last 3 months. It closed up 2.05% to $44.45/share on Friday.