Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are excellent trading vehicles that allow investors to easily play whole sectors, indexes, or individual commodities. ETFs may be structured like mutual funds, but are bought and sold like stocks.

Inverse ETFs enable one to place a bearish bet, effectively going “short” without having to borrow shares, as you would with stocks. Another advantage of inverse ETFs is that the downside risk of going long on the “short” is finite, meaning you can only lose your initial investment. The potential loss from shorting a stock is theoretically unlimited.

Leveraged ETFs are designed to replicate twice the expected gain or loss of the underlying commodity, index, or basket of equities. Large moves in the markets like those of the past few days create opportunities for leveraged ETFs to realize massive gains. FXP, for example, returns approximately twice the inverse (i.e., double short) of the China FXI index, and gained 26.3%

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Financial NewsJason Corcoran in Moscow23 June 2008 Investment climate is steady as new leader continues reform agenda Russia’s equity markets are enjoying the country’s honeymoon period under its new leadership, but investors remain wary of how the power-sharing arrangement will evolve.The changing of the guard on May 7 saw Vladimir Putin hand over the presidential mantle to his protégé Dmitry Medvedev. Within hours, Medvedev had nominated his mentor Putin as Prime Minister.The smooth choreography proved to be a fillip for Russia’s main stock markets and sparked a buying spree by foreign funds.The MSCI Russia Index was the best performing emerging equity market last month, rising 15.7%, and outperforming the MSCI EM Emea index, which rose 7.3% in the same month. Inflows recorded in the third week of May of $542m (€350m) were the highest in Russia ...