Enviado: 3/4/2006 9:16"Dieter Bardy | 05-20-05
Oil ETF Tries to Strike It Rich
A fund family has staked a claim to offer the first exchange-traded fund based on the world's most actively traded commodity, but it's not one of the complexes you would have expected.
Ameristock Funds, a small Alameda, Calif.-based fund shop known for audacious plans, beat EFT industry behemoths like Barclays Global Advisors and State Street Global Advisors to the punch by filing papers seeking regulatory approval for the New York Oil ETF.
The ETF, which will be organized as a limited partnership and run as a commodity pool, will try to track the price of light, sweet crude oil by investing in oil futures contracts and other derivatives traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, according to a prospectus filed May 16 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The ETF will charge a management fee of 0.4% on the first $1 billion in assets and 0.2% thereafter, according to the prospectus. Nicholas D. Gerber, longtime manager of the Ameristock Fund AMSTX, and John Love, who is in charge of marketing for Ameristock, are listed as the ETF's managers in the document. Neither of them have experience running a commodity pool, but Gerber once served as managing director of a futures index fund.
Financial advisors and individual and institutional investors have eagerly awaited another commodity ETF in the wake of the successful launches of two gold offerings in 2004 and early 2005. There is growing interest in using such assets, which tend to be uncorrelated with stocks and bonds, to diversify portfolios. No doubt higher oil prices in recent years also have fueled market demand for such a fund.
It could be a while before investors can use this ETF to slake their thirst for oil, though. The approval process for the first gold ETF, StreetTracks Gold Shares GLD, took more than a year. The SEC is likely to take a good, hard, long look at the Oil ETF proposal, too...."
Oil ETF Tries to Strike It Rich
A fund family has staked a claim to offer the first exchange-traded fund based on the world's most actively traded commodity, but it's not one of the complexes you would have expected.
Ameristock Funds, a small Alameda, Calif.-based fund shop known for audacious plans, beat EFT industry behemoths like Barclays Global Advisors and State Street Global Advisors to the punch by filing papers seeking regulatory approval for the New York Oil ETF.
The ETF, which will be organized as a limited partnership and run as a commodity pool, will try to track the price of light, sweet crude oil by investing in oil futures contracts and other derivatives traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, according to a prospectus filed May 16 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The ETF will charge a management fee of 0.4% on the first $1 billion in assets and 0.2% thereafter, according to the prospectus. Nicholas D. Gerber, longtime manager of the Ameristock Fund AMSTX, and John Love, who is in charge of marketing for Ameristock, are listed as the ETF's managers in the document. Neither of them have experience running a commodity pool, but Gerber once served as managing director of a futures index fund.
Financial advisors and individual and institutional investors have eagerly awaited another commodity ETF in the wake of the successful launches of two gold offerings in 2004 and early 2005. There is growing interest in using such assets, which tend to be uncorrelated with stocks and bonds, to diversify portfolios. No doubt higher oil prices in recent years also have fueled market demand for such a fund.
It could be a while before investors can use this ETF to slake their thirst for oil, though. The approval process for the first gold ETF, StreetTracks Gold Shares GLD, took more than a year. The SEC is likely to take a good, hard, long look at the Oil ETF proposal, too...."