While the stock market has retreated since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran, another broad category, commodities, has delivered double-digit returns so far this year.

That’s in no small part due to oil prices that are going through the roof, as Iran has effectively blocked the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most important crude-shipping corridors in the world. But, ETFs with exposure to precious metals and rare earth elements have also seen returns over 15%, and agricultural commodities funds have climbed significantly as well. Something that definitely hasn’t hurt one commodities ETF is diversification. Harbor Capital Advisors’ Commodity All-Weather Strategy ETF (HGER) has returned nearly 26% so far this year. That fund shifts its exposure between commodities based on insurance dynamics, with the portfolio going between scarcity and debasement scenarios, Harbor portfolio manager Jake Schurmeier said.

“In the current environment, we still have a pretty significant overweight to gold and the more debasement side of the portfolio,” he said. “That has evolved and shifted a bit more to the consumables side.”

Addicted to Oil

There’s no getting around the world’s dependence on petroleum. Iran, which has claimed responsibility for several recent attacks on tanker ships in the Strait of Hormuz and has reportedly been laying mines in the waterway, has vowed to block ships as part of its resistance to attacks from the US and Israel. Oil prices, while fluctuating, have shot above $100 per barrel in the past week from prior fair values of $60 to $65, Schurmeier said. But it’s not just oil that is affected by the strait’s closure, as fertilizer chemicals supplied by the Middle East are also moved through it.

A few ETFs show how the war has affected commodities, as of market close on Friday:

• The United States Oil Fund (USO) is up 74%, and the State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE) has risen 26%. Separately, a fund focused on shipping, the Breakwave Tanker Shipping ETF (BWET), has surged 218%.
• The SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) has added 16%, VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF (REMX) has gained 17%.
• The Teucrium Corn Fund (CORN) has climbed 6%, and that firm’s Soybean Fund (SOYB) is up 13%.

Ex-Pat Investments? Trump administration policies like global tariffs have fueled the sell-America trend that has weighed on the stock market. And while defense stocks have seen a boost from the war (iShares US Aerospace and Defense ETF (ITA) is up 3%), the S&P 500 is down 3%. An environment in which the US leadership continues to double down on trade-related threats will show the world that “the US is just an unreliable partner,” Schurmeier said. “You’ll continue to accelerate that diversification outside of US assets.”

Crypto investors can have it ether way.

Staked or unstaked, that is. Last week, BlackRock launched a long-awaited version of its Ethereum ETF that adds the benefits of staking, where the digital asset network’s proof-of-stake validation can offer some yields to investors. The new iShares Staked Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHB) is now offered alongside the company’s $6.5 billion Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA), which is currently the largest ethereum fund on the market.

“By bringing together spot ether exposure and staking rewards in an [exchange-traded product], ETHB provides investors with an important new avenue to participate in the ecosystem’s evolution,” BlackRock’s global head of digital assets Robert Mitchnick said in a statement.

How Low Can It Go?

After suffering brutal price declines that started in late 2025, the big digital assets, such as bitcoin and ethereum, have inched up slightly. Ethereum was up about 8% last week, for example, and there has been speculation that the price plunge is mostly over (a hopeful sentiment but impossible to tell). Values have remained unstable as some investors may have been in profit-taking mode after institutional investors began selling their holdings last year. Still, the big crypto ETFs have seen modest inflows in recent days. And in that regard, ETHB is an outlier, having surpassed $100 million in assets.

A look at the new ETF:

• It charges a 25-basis-point fee, currently with a one-year waiver bringing it down to 12 bps on the first $2.5 billion in assets.
• Staking rewards go back to investors as income, though 18% go to iShares and Coinbase.

But, Why? Staking rewards stand to benefit ETHB investors more so than those in BlackRock’s non-staking companion ETHA, raising the question of why investors would need or want a choice between the two. There are two risks that come with staking: slashing and liquidity, said Don Friedman, CEO of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. The first happens if a validator acts dishonestly and loses a portion of its staked ethereum, while the second relates to ethereum being locked up and potentially trading at a discount. “With a non-staked ethereum ETF, you avoid these risks, and the investor is simply hoping for capital appreciation,” he said.

State Street is back at it with another installment of ETFs that offer a slice of private exposure, this time in asset-backed securities.

Its IG Public and Private ABS ETF (PRAB) adds to the line the firm started last year, which includes the IG Public and Private Credit ETF (PRIV) and Short Duration IG Public and Private Credit ETF (PRSD). The buildout is part of an expansion in the fixed-income ETF market, which is following a similar path to equity ETFs that have expanded into a wide range of products, said Mark Alberici, global head of product innovation and strategic partnerships.

“Clients want granular building blocks,” he told ETF Upside. “There really wasn’t something there in the asset-backed securities world, and we thought this was a rich area for them.”

Back that Asset

To that point, there are only a handful of US ETFs that invest broadly in asset-backed securities. There are far more that focus on a subset of the category, collateralized loan obligations, per data from Morningstar Direct:

• The Janus Henderson Asset-Backed Securities ETF (JABS) launched last year and represents $131 million in assets. DoubleLine’s Asset-Backed Securities ETF (DABS), which is just over a year old, manages $115 million.
• Another fund, the VictoryShares Pioneer Asset-Based Income ETF (ABI), also started trading last year, and now has $57 million in assets.
• By comparison, there are more than two dozen CLO ETFs on the market, roughly a third of which launched in the past year. The category represents about $40 billion, with more than half of that being in just one product, the Janus Henderson AAA CLO ETF (JAAA).

Like State Street’s two other public and private ETFs, the asset-backed iteration sources the private holdings in the portfolio from Apollo, which helps provide liquidity and is required to repurchase the private debt as needed. PRIV, which made headlines at its launch in early 2025, only recently caught on in a big way. That fund has pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars in flows this year, likely from institutional investors, ramping up its asset base from about $45 million at the end of the year to a current level of $830 million. The other ETF, PRSD, sits at about $72 million in assets.

Solid ABS: The new fund PRAB, has most of its assets in AAA-rated debt, and about 26% of the investments are sourced by Apollo. The fund holds residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities, auto loans, CLOs, credit card debt, student loans and other debt. The benefit of investing across the asset-backed securities category, versus CLOs alone, is variety. “It’s about giving people diversification benefits,” Alberici said.