Horizons BetaPro Global Gold Plus ETF has performed terribly at times vs the US GDX, particularly when examining the four year, three year, and one year time frames.
Click on chart(s) to expand
Not taken into account in the above chart is currency differential, but at HGU's peak, the Canadian Dollar was trading roughly where it is sitting today.
If three years ago you had invested $10,000 into HGU.TO on a buy-and-hold basis, what would it be worth today? It's not pretty.
Now, let's compare HGU.TO to an "ordinary" TD precious metal mutual fund over the same three years:
A gain of $6,400 for TD vs a loss of $2,050 with HGU.
To be fair, HGU has out-performed the TD Fund from the lows the two printed in 2008; nevertheless, any potential pullbacks in PM shares will likely see HGU hit harder than the average PM mutual fund.
ETF's have their place, but they've been designed for momentum traders. Without velocity behind these double ETF's, they simply don't perform efficiently nor effectively. It's all there in Horizon's company prospectus, by the way. They aren't out to mislead anyone; unfortunately, most people don't read a prospectus nor research the pros and cons of juiced ETF's.
