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07 Apr: WTI Weekly

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) is a light, sweet crude oil that serves as one of the main global oil benchmarks. It is sourced primarily from inland Texas and is one of the highest quality oils in the world, which is easy to refine. WTI is the underlying commodity for the NYMEX’s oil futures contract. WTI is known as a light sweet oil because it contains around 0.34% sulfur, making it “sweet,” and has a low density (specific gravity), making it “light.”1

06 Apr: XLI Weekly

XLI: U.S. industrials sector offers access to transportation firms, commercial and professional services, and manufacturers of capital goods. Given the sector-specific focus, XLI likely doesn’t deserve a core allocation, but may be useful as a means of implementing a tactical tilt towards the industrials sector for a sector rotation strategy. The primary appeal of XLI lies in the impressive liquidity; used widely as a trading vehicle by active investors, XLI will generally feature very narrow bid-ask spreads. The depth of the XLI portfolio, however, leaves something to be desired. This ETF has far fewer holdings than options such as VIS, FIL, and IYJ, and also maintains a big weighting in GE.

06 Apr: XLE Weekly

XLE is U.S. energy industry, including many of the world’s largest oil producers. Compared to other energy options, XLE is impressive in terms of both cost efficiency and liquidity; investors can generally expect to execute at penny wide spreads. But like many funds offering exposure to the energy sector, XLE maintains some concentration issues, as a few stocks account for big chunks of the total portfolio.

06 Apr: URA

This ETF gives investors an opportunity to achieve exposure to uranium, an important mineral that currently is inaccessible via futures. For investors looking to bet on increased demand for a raw material used widely in power production, URA is a nice option. URA often trades as a leveraged play on the underlying natural resources, meaning that this fund can experience significant volatility but can be a powerful tool for profiting from a surge in commodity prices.