Each week, I like to publish the past week's hottest ETFs to share some new trends and niche ETFs out there and give investors some new ideas. For this week, short leveraged ETFs were extremely hot in the energy and emerging markets sectors especially. I always caution that the leveraged ETFs carry substantial risks that aren't intuitive to prospective investors that haven't researched them fully due to daily rebalancing among other things. With the market volatility continuing to ensue and geopolitics heating up, cautious investors may also want to consider more stable, predictable returns in Structured Notes Products or other alternative investments to account for at least part of their portfolios. But, rounding out the top of the list are:

ERY - Up 23% - Energy Bear 3X Shares Russell 1000 Energy - While the 3X long ERX had been a stalwart performer in the prior several weeks, energy stocks took a breather this week. It's worth noting that even though oil is up 15% YTD, both the long and the short ETFs are down over 20%, hence, why I refer to the 3X leveraged ETFs as the riskiest ETFs on earth for their long term depreciation behavior. Remember, these are for day-week trades, not for holds. If you want to capture a secular move in an index or commodity, I recommend just going with the 1 underlying instrument.

EDZ - Up 20% - Emerging Markets Bear 3X - While up 20% for the week, betting against emerging markets has not been a sound strategy during the prior 3 months, with EDZ losing 70% of its value.

SMN - Up 16% -Proshares Ultra Short 2X Base Metals - With the dollar showing some strength during the prior week, metals and commodities in general showed a loss. I don't view this as a long-term trend, but perhaps commodities were getting ahead of themselves on fears of a more precipitous fall in the dollar and inflationary expectations.

DUG - Up 15% -Proshares Ultra Short 2X Oil and Gas - This is a bet against future rising oil and gas prices. While it worked out last week, I wouldn't bet against the recent trend, especially in light of the recent events in Iran. As a long term hedge against rising energy prices, this isn't an ideal ETF given its leveraged nature and short term utilization. Check out this article if interested learning how to hedge gas prices or whatever your primary energy expenditures are this summer.

Newly Launched ETFs

Since the leveraged ETFs were the only ones that made the list this week, it's worth mentioning that some new leveraged ETFs were launched by Proshares earlier in the month:

Ultra Long 2X

Ultra MSCI EAFE	EFO	MSCI EAFE Index	200%
Ultra MSCI Emerging Markets	EET	MSCI Emerging Markets Index	200%
Ultra FTSE/Xinhua China 25	XPP	FTSE/Xinhua China 25 Index	200%
Ultra MSCI Japan	EZJ	MSCI Japan Index	200%

Ultra Short 2X

UltraShort MSCI Europe	EPV	MSCI Europe Index	-200%
UltraShort MSCI Pacific ex-Japan	JPX	MSCI Pacific ex-Japan Index	-200%
UltraShort MSCI Brazil	BZQ	MSCI Brazil Index	-200%
UltraShort MSCI Mexico Market	SMK	MSCI Mexico Investable Market	-200%

Disclosure: No position in the aforementioned ETFs.

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