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The American Stock Exchange confirmed that Van Eck Global has launched its fifth ETF on Amex today.  Its name is the Market Vectors-Agribusiness ETF (Amex:MOO), and this one tracks a global group of 40 company stocks that are in Agribusiness.  More specifically, this is tied to soft commodity and bioenergy companies and every aspect around them: manufacturing, processing, refining, transporting, distributing, marketing, trading, packaging, and storing of agriproducts. 

From now on, we’ll refer to it as "The Moo," and The Moo is set to track the price and yield performance of the DAXglobal® Agribusiness Index, which is comprised of common stocks and depository receipts that are listed for trading on major stock exchanges around the world and involved in the business of agriculture. The Moo components include companies engaged in agriproduct operations, agricultural chemicals, livestock operations, agricultural equipment, and ethanol/biodiesel, and which predominantly derive at least 50% of their total revenues from such activities.

We openly endorse ETF’s, but we like to look for ETF’s with volume.  Today was day one, but it only traded 6,500 shares on the day.  Generally speaking, these international or global basket ETF’s tend to be more liquid based on how focused they are.  This one is focused on a fairly apples to apples basket in company operations and 52% of the index weighting is US-based companies, but it is diversified from a country standpoint for the other 48% and there are few investors in the US where The Moo trades that invest in DAX Indices.

Here is the full data on the DAXglobal® Agribusiness Index, including the 40 components.  Here is an abbreviated list of the 40 companies and the countries (pardon abberviations): ABB Grain Ltd. (Australia), AGCO Corp. (US), Agrium (Canada), The Andersons (US), Archer Daniels Midland (US), Assoc. British Foods (UK), Aventine (US), AWB Ltd. (Australia), Bunge (US), CH Ind. (US), China Agri-Business (HK), CNH Global NV (NE), Corn Products (US), Cresud SA (ARG.), Darling Int’l. (US), Deere (US), Gehl Co. (US), Gruma SAB (MEX), IOI Corp. (Malaysia), Komatsu (Japan), Lindsay (US), MGP Ingredients (US), Monsanto (US), Mosaic Co. (US), OLAM INT’L (Singapore), Pacific Ethanol (US), Pilgrim’s Pride (US), Pine Agritech (China), Potash (Canada), Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (Canada), Smithfield Foods (US), Syngenta AG (Switzerland), Terra Ind. (US), Tiger Brands (South Africa), Tractor Supply (US), Tyson Foods (US), UAP Holdings (US), Verasun Energy (US), Wilmar Int’l (Singapore), Yara Int’l (Norway).

Jon C. Ogg
September 5, 2007