Commodities For Dummies
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With Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), you can now access investment products that were once the purview of expert industry insiders and professional commodity traders. ETFs offer easy access to commodities.

SPDR Gold Shares

The SPDR Gold Shares ETF (NYSE: GLD) is one of the most popular ETFs ever created, not just as a commodity product, but also as an ETF product in general. Designed to track the spot price of bullion, GLD actually owns physical gold, which it stores in vaults protected by armed guards, high-tech security, and full-scale insurance coverage.

With almost $60 billion in total assets (2011 figures), its popularity among investors has been so great that many analysts have to factor it in when examining daily and monthly price fluctuations of spot gold prices.

iShares Silver Trust

With more than $20 billion in assets, the iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV) is an extremely popular ETF product with investors. It tracks the spot price of the silver contract in the NYMEX division of the CME. Before this ETF product arrived, novice investors without experience in the futures markets had tremendous difficulty getting direct exposure to silver prices.

Silver has many peculiar characteristics, so be sure to do your due diligence before you pull the trigger on this ETF.

iPath DJ-UBS Aluminum TR Sub-Index

This ETF product, courtesy of Dow Jones and UBS (JJU), is a new addition to the ETF commodity family. It tracks the aluminum contract on the CME through the use of futures contracts and gives you exposure to this important base metal.

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Amine Bouchentouf is an internationally acclaimed author and market commentator. You can follow his market analysis at www.commodities-investors.com.

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