5 New ETFS Play With Bonds and Beans

While bonds were the most prevalent theme among last week�s five new exchange-traded fund offerings, the most interesting could be found in the dirt.

The Teucrium Agricultural Fund (NYSE:TAGS) is a first-of-its-kind agricultural fund-of-funds meant to give investors exposure to four commodities: corn, soybeans, sugar and wheat. Thus, it has just four holdings, with equal weightings doled out to four commodity funds:

• Teucrium Sugar Fund (NYSE:CANE)
• Teucrium Corn Fund (NYSE:CORN)
• Teucrium Soybean Fund (NYSE:SOYB)
• Teucrium Wheat Fund (NYSE:WEAT)

CORN, the largest of the four funds at $65 million in total assets, has been the worst-performing of the quartet year-to-date, down about 6.5%. WEAT has shed almost 6%, too, while CANE is up about 4% and SOYB is up around 9%. CORN charges 0.32% in expenses.

The remaining four ETFs stuck to bonds. Guggenheim released three funds for corporate bonds that expire in 2018, 2019 and 2020 — BSCI, BSCJ and BSCK, each at 0.24% expense ratios — but the fund of note came from ProShares, which launched an inverse triple-leveraged bond fund, the ProShares UltraPro Short 20+ Year Treasury ETF (NYSE:TTT).

TTT, like its 2X cousin, the ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury ETF (NYSE:TBT), tracks the Barclays Capital U.S. 20+ Year Treasury Index. As always, investors should be aware of the risk that such a multiple-leveraging fund can multiply your losses, as well as the risks involved in the compounding of daily returns, which ProShares succinctly explains here. TTT charges 0.95% in expenses.

And while PIMCO didn�t launch any new funds last week, the company did make a pair of headlines. Today, Bill Gross, manager of the Total Return Fund (MUTF:PTTRX) and the recently launched Total Return ETF (NYSE:TRXT), told CNN Money that PIMCO is preparing to create other actively managed ETFs. And, starting April 4, the quickly popular TRXT fund will be getting a name change, to BOND.

All in all, 85 new funds launched during the first quarter of 2012, according to XTF.com. The previous week�s launches were small in number, but varying in flavor.

Kyle Woodley is the assistant editor of InvestorPlace.com. As of this writing, he did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. Follow him on Twitter at @KyleWoodley.