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Indeed, the Energy SPDR (Amex: XLE) exchange-traded fund, which has returned more than 26% on an annualized basis over the past five years, has fallen on hard times lately, shedding nearly 16% of its value for the three months that ended on Aug. 8.

With that broad recommendation in mind, we borrow Peter Lynch's famed "two-minute drill" to highlight this energy stock worth considering r

Analysis of Global Coal Prices & Energy Commodity Funds

The accompanying 5-month chart presents an analysis of the global price of near-month coal futures contracts from the U.S. (QL – Central Appalachian NYMEX Coal Futures), South Africa (AFR – Richards Bay ICE Coal Futures), and Europe (ATW – Rotterdam ICE Coal Futures) compared to the Market Vectors Coal ETF (KOL), U.S. Natural Gas Fund (UNG, and U.S. Oil Fund (USO). Although this is not a huge amount of historical data, the past five months presents an interesting analysis given the tremendous volati

A Commodity Fund to Track Global Coal Price

The accompanying table contains a summary and statistics for 16 ETFI global equity indexes and two commodity pool fund ideas, with the short/inverse and defensive themes outpacing the overall market averages over the past year in the midst of ongoing market turmoil around the world.

Although currently out of favor with investors, new commodity pool fund ideas include timber and coal. The CoalFund is a commodity pool that is structured to track the performance of exchange-traded, near-month futures contra

Russia ETF Trading Down On Political Concerns And Decline In Commodities

The Market Vectors Russia [product website web link] (RSX) has been trading in the red lately as illustrated in the three-month chart due to a downtrend in energy commodity prices – as the ETF has a 38.9% concentration in oil and gas companies – and the invasion of Georgia. The Russia ETF is dominated (95%) by large caps, defined in this fund as companies over $6 billion market caps, of which over two-thirds are commodity-related (energy, metals, and agriculture).
The fund is also fa

With all of the discussions on global warming, gasoline prices, ethanol, and solar, I thought that it would be an opportune time to look at how clean and dirty energy companies have performed recently. I am going to use two ETFs for this comparison (Energy Select Spider, ( AMEX: XLE ) and PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy, ( AMEX: PBW ). Here is the YTD (click on charts for better view).

And for the last month:

As you can see, the past month has been very strong for the clean energy sector. Really, it has been the past two weeks that have pushed the