Employee of The Week-- MOO

The Market Vectors Agribusiness ETF (MOO) is this week's employee of note given its 3.9% appreciation.  MOO pays a dividend of 1.3% and has had a total return of nearly 41% since its beginning in September 2007.

The five largest holdings are Mosaic, Deere, Monsanto, Wilmar International (an Asian agribusiness giant), and Potash.  MOO's holdings are involved with all aspects of agriculture:  fertilizers, farm equipment, seeds, herbicides, and food products such as rice, oils, etc.  CRBA is a another agribusiness ETF with similar returns but its volume is quite small.  We also own the futures based agricultural commodities ETF DBA.  Looking at the following chart (courtesy of ETFreplay) showing the total returns of MOO (green), DBA (blue), SPY (yellow), and BND (white), it's clear that investments in agriculture have fared well over the past several years.