Direxion expands short and leveraged ETF suite with biotech, healthcare and natural gas exposures

Dec 4th, 2015 | By | Category: Alternatives / Multi-Asset

Direxion Investments, a US-based provider of short and leveraged (S&L) exchange-traded funds, has launched three new ETFs offering short exposures to the biotech, healthcare and natural gas industries.

Direxion expands suite of multidirectional ETFs with three S&L launches

Direxion’s newly launched ETFs are tailored for investors with bearish expectations of the biotech, healthcare, and natural gas sectors.

These ETFs complement existing funds offering bullish exposures in their respective sectors, affording investors with greater flexibility to tailor their desired exposure. S&L funds are usually held for a limited period of time and serve the purpose of allowing investors to capture movements in price attributable to short-term event-driven news.

Sylvia Jablonski, Managing Director at Direxion, commented: “We understand that market direction matters, so we strive to offer an alternative to static investment strategies while delivering exposure to the various markets in which traders have expressed high levels of interest. We currently offer 3X leveraged bull funds for healthcare and natural gas stocks and both 3X bull and 3X bear funds for biotech stocks. These new bear funds will complement this existing suite of products to give traders a more nimble way to take advantage of short-term opportunities in these sectors.”

The Direxion Daily S&P Biotech Bear 1X Shares (LABS) provides the inverse daily performance of the S&P Biotechnology Select Industry Index. As of 30 November 2015, the index is composed of 98 securities operating primarily in the biomedical/gene (65.7%), medical drugs (22.9%), therapeutics (7.7%) sectors. The fund carries a total expense ratio of 0.45%.

The Direxion Daily Healthcare Bear 3X Shares (SICK) seeks daily investment results of 300% of the inverse of the performance of the Health Care Select Sector Index. As of 30 November 2015, the index contains firms operating in the pharmaceuticals (34.7%), biotechnology (27.9%), healthcare services (20.6%), and healthcare equipment (12.7%) industries. The fund carries a total expense ratio of 0.95%.

The Direxion Daily Natural Gas Related Bear 3X Shares (GASX) tracks the inverse of the performance of the ISE-Revere Natural Gas Index while leveraging returns to a factor of three. The index contains firms with a substantial portion of revenue derived from the exploration and production of natural gas. As such, movement in the value of the index is highly correlated with changes in the price for natural gas. There are 29 component stocks which are allocated an equal weighting on index rebalancing dates. The ETF has a total expense ratio of 0.95%.

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