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4 ETF funds in the Energy Nebulae

Michael Jackson's Memorial Service was great, for those of you who missed it. Wow! What a send off.

Anyways, the market has been trending downward lately with crude oil leading the way. I thought that the big news for me yesterday morning was hearing that the head of the CFTC was considering imposing trading curbs on excessive speculation in energy and commodities.

Whoopee! It's about time. I am all about making a buck, but I felt that the energy producers and the large institutions that speculated on oil and gas, which began in 2004, contributed to the price of crude touching $150 per barrel, which caused the price of gasoline to skyrocket and delivered the final death blow to the economy two years ago. I do not believe the U.S. economy can take another hit like that again.

However, I believe the industry is still a good bet for long term profits, but not like what we saw years ago. If you want to invest in oil and gas companies and you believe that the industry may still be a good investment for the long-term, here are four solid Energy ETFs that have recovered so far for the first half of this year. These four energy ETFs are comparable in Fund Price, 12 Month Return, Morning Star Ratings, Expense Ratio, Average Mkt Cap and Sales Load.

* iShares Dow Jones US Energy Fund (NYSE ARCA:IYE)
* iShares S&P Global Energy Sector Index Fund (NYSE ARCA:IXC)
* Vanguard Energy ETF (Vipers) ( NYSE ARCA:VDE)
* Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund ( NYSE ARCA:XLE)

I did some trading in the Vanguard Vipers a couple years ago when the oil and gas sector was hot with some success but their attractiveness slow-w-ly faded when their share price quickly fell from their high of $120 to the low $60s. I was like whoa-a-a!

Again, the funds are all comparably the same except the Vanguard Vipers which has a slightly higher Beta Coefficient- signaling it is more volatile and riskier, and its Portfolio Turnover percentage which is 4 to 6 times higher than the other funds- a signal that transaction costs for the fund will be higher which of course will reduce shareholders total returns.

7/9/2009 12:09 PM

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