Dollar ETF Keeps Looking To The Fed

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates earlier this week, marking the second time this year that the U.S. central bank has boosted borrowing costs. That move by the Fed has helped the PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish Fund UUP, widely viewed as a dud this year among developed market currency exchange-traded funds, to a gain of more than 0.5 percent this week.

U.S. Dollar ETF: UUP

UUP is the ETF proxy on the U.S. Dollar Index, providing investors with exposure to the dollar's move against the euro, Japanese yen, British pound, Canadian dollar, Swedish krona and Swiss franc.

“UUP is well off of its peak levels in terms of assets under management, and has not been helped by sizable outflows year-to-date of over $215 million,” said Street One Financial in a note out Thursday. “Since its inception back in 2007, we have seen the fund at or north of $1 billion at times, so the current participation in the product in terms of assets under management may demonstrate some hesitation in the U.S. Dollar, since the currency has given back all of the gains and then some that it registered immediately following Trump’s election last November.”

Within A Broader Context

Over the past month, investors have pulled $70.3 million from UUP, but UUP's bearish counterpart, the PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bearish Fund UDN, has seen modest inflows over the same period. UDN is more than a decade old and has nearly $43 million in assets under management, nearly 10 percent of which has flowed into the fund over the past month.

“Given the recent pressure outside of today’s rally, it would not be surprising to see an uptick in interest in UDN for those investors whom may have turned bearish on the U.S. Dollar in the past several months,” said Paul Weisbruch.

The Federal Open Market Committee's recent meeting minutes reveal 12 of 16 Fed governors are advocating for another rate hike this year, bringing the 2017 total to three, and the same number are in favor of three more rate hikes next year. That could bode well for UUP over the medium term.