ETF data vendor Ultumus reported yesterday that Proshares has launched their Ultrashort MSCI Japan into Germany and London: ticker J40A. Assuming this is a copy of issuers existing US fund this will “provide daily investment results, before fees and expenses, that correspond to two times the inverse (-2x) of the daily performance of the MSCI Japan Index®.”
The US ETfFlost 10% in the first quarter of 2017, which is not terrifically surprising as Japanese equities have been on a tear over the last year. Take a look at the Nikkei 225 technical chart for the last year, for instance, and you’ll see that this benchmark index has cruised through its 20 and 200 day moving average, crashed through 20000 index points and is now looking set for a trend breakout once it gets past 20500. Hardly the best circumstances then to be launching a two times bear tracker on a lesser known Japanese equities index. Then again maybe it’s inspired genius!