As the ETF industry has expanded in recent years, a significant portion of growth has come from the tremendous rise in popularity of exchange-traded commodity products. In addition to broad-based funds such as DBC or DJCI, several commodity-specific products have accumulated billions of dollars in assets, and several were even among the very largest of all ETFs at the end of 2009.

The title says "How", but the article also has a significant amount of "Why". I'm using ETFs to efficiently diversify & hedge my portfolio. The author also points out something that I've found to be true: when you use ETFs to diversify, it gives you freedom to research & invest in a few stellar individual stocks.

There has been a lot of debate across the news channels and media about whether we are due for a pullback, whether the markets have superficially shot up about 50 percent, whether this is a robust recovery or whether we will flatten out and see this “inverse square root” recovery.

The chatter over the consumer rages on. The statistics showing the increased saving rates and reduced spending are everywhere. What do we believe or not believe becomes the question. The easiest answer is to look at the economic data and glean whatever insight we can. The retail sales data has been down, but not out.