Today in the economy

[killersheep]

huh? that is bizarre. Surely you don't mean it really does track consumer confidence. I could read up on it, but I'd rather hear you describe the mechanism by which an etf can inversely track consumer confidence. I mean, how can you have shares in that?

It doesn't invest in consumer confidence, but it plays against consumer services things like food, vitamins, clothing and other perishables, of course a decrease in stock values (belief of value of ownership) of this nature has a direct correlation to consumer confidence. Consumer confidence is a measure of how much consumers plan to spend vs. save today and in the future. Since the fund shorts stocks of manufacturers, retailers and distributers of said items it is always betting that consumer confidence as well as demand is declining. The 207 companies this fund invests in are believed to be a good cross section of what the average consumer would be expected to spend their money in a given year, it's mostly average income things like Autozone, Bed, Bath and beyond, Chipotle, burger king, eBay and things like that.
This is a bear market security and is expected to do very well in bear markets, but extremely poorly in bull markets. Make sense?

Bottom line you can expect this fund to go up when consumer confidence goes down and down when consumer confidence goes up.

OK thanks, that helps. It explains the tracking but it does seem to imply that the demand for these perishables goes up when consumer confidence goes down, and it's not clear to me why this should happen, but I guess it happens.

It happens when people make a conscious decision to make do with less, it doesn't track commodity items like staple foods wheat, corn, beans etc. which is naturally what people gravitate towards as essentials in rough times. Rather, it reflects one step past that, look at it this way "If I get things that are essential to me and have $10 left will I spend it or save it?"