Topic: How To Invest

Pat: What are your thoughts re: the Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF and SPDR Gold Shares? Thanks for all the good advice.

Article Excerpt

Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF, $50.08, symbol MOO on New York (Shares outstanding: 110.9 million; Market cap: $5.6 billion; www.vaneck.com), aims to track the DAXglobal Agribusiness Index. The index includes agricultural companies from around the world. To be included in the index, a company must be publicly traded, have a market cap over $150 million U.S. and meet certain minimum trading volume rules. The index contains five major subsectors: agriculture chemicals and fertilizers, agricultural product operations, agricultural equipment, livestock operations, and biofuels (including ethanol and biodiesel). The geographic breakdown of stocks in the DAXglobal Agribusiness Index is as follows: U.S. (39.7%), Canada (13.8%), Singapore (9.0%), Switzerland (7.2%), Malaysia (5.9%), Brazil (4.4%), the Netherlands (3.7%), Japan (3.6%), Norway (3.6%), Australia (2.5%) and other countries (6.6%). Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF was launched on August 31, 2007. The fund holds 48 stocks and has a 0.53% expense ratio. The ETF yields 0.7%. The fund’s top 10 holdings are Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (8.2%), Monsanto Co. (8.0%), Syngenta AG…