May was a positive month for the US equity markets as the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 1.86%, the NASDAQ gained 3.82%, and the S&P 500 upticked 2.08%. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for commodity and international equity benchmarks as they fell in the red for May.
To put everything in perspective and see who were the absolute biggest gainers and losers for the month of May, we ran performance data from a list of over 1100 ETFs excluding inverse, leverage, and volatility products. Below are some observations that are worth pointing out.
By quickly glancing at the best performing ETF table below, one can clearly see that most of the names come from the sector-based ETF category, specifically Clean Energy. The best performing ETF in May was the Guggenheim Solar ETF (TAN), which was up 22.28%. Financials would be another area that performed well in May.
On the flip side, most of those names that appeared in the worst performing table include commodity-related products such as metals, cotton, and agriculture. Other ETFs in this category are Asia Pacific funds, specifically Australia and New Zealand (EWA, EWAS, KROO, AUSE, and ENZL).