WHEN I WROTE ABOUT

exchange-traded funds back in

the field had already grown to 113 ETFs, up from a single fund the

SPDR Trust

For a while, it appeared as if the pipeline was getting thin, with firms rolling out copycat large-cap funds, Nasdaq-look-alike tech offerings and other relatively boring exposures most of us already owned. Now issuers have smartened up. New funds increasingly not only offer access to niche areas of the market but to specific strategies and techniques. Indeed, today's investors have a toolbelt of opportunities that would've been almost impossible to execute even a few years back. Here are a few of the recent offerings that I believe are among the most interesting.

As I've written in recent months, commodities just aren't showing the same strength and leadership as they have for much of this decade. By and large, the hot money appears to have fled energy and metals and landed squarely in the grain markets. Wheat, for example, recently jumped to a 10-year high. For the moment, it presents a bit of a challenge: While there are now a number of ways to speculate in metals or oil, including StreetTracks Gold Shares, iShares COMEX Gold Trust, United States Oil Fund and iPath Goldman Sachs Crude Oil Index ETN, betting on wheat or corn without opening up a separate commodities account is virtually impossible.

One option to consider is the iPath Dow-Jones AIG Commodity Total Return ETN, which tracks the index of the same name and trades throughout the day just like any other stock or ETF. Unlike other commodity-linked products such as PowerShares DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund, however, DJP is broadly diversified and provides the most exposure to the white-hot grain markets.

The iPath funds are slightly different from traditional ETFs or closed-end mutual funds because they are actually debt instruments issued by Barclays that are designed to track a particular market. That being said, given the bank's size and financial strength, the end user need not be concerned about the possibility of default.

Going With the Grain
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And while 13.36% of the fund is allocated to the Nymex crude oil contract, agricultural commodities make up the fund's largest subsector, amounting to 30% of assets. Soybeans (7.18%), corn (6.12%) and wheat (5.19%) are top-10 holdings, and all happen to be among the strongest trades in the current market environment. For an investor considering a commodities exposure or simply looking at the various options available, this is most certainly one to be aware of. Until Deutsche Bank'sagricultural ETF begins trading this is the most efficient way to get your grain on.

I've often talked about the importance of avoiding the herd. A recently launched product purports to do just that by specifically owning the stocks that have little or no coverage from Wall Street analysts. The Claymore/Sabrient Stealth ETF offers exactly such a line of attack.

Conceptually, the theory makes sense. The approach suggests that investors can outperform by concentrating on areas of the market where research is thin. Index creator Sabrient screens for various fundamental metrics such as earnings or cash flow, but only companies not covered by the analyst community are included. The effect is to buy a group of stocks "flying under the radar" of Wall Street that nevertheless has attractive growth prospects. The equal-weighted fund of 150 stocks is rebalanced quarterly.

The back-tested results bear out the claims. From 1996 to 2006, the Stealth index beat the Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks 80% of the time, churning out an average annual return of 20.27% compared to 9.39% for the Russell.

Interestingly, the index has lagged behind its benchmark as of late, no doubt in part due to the fact that the market has recently preferred large-cap stocks over their smaller counterparts. The average market cap of companies in the fund is $768 million, with over 80% of the holdings classified as either microcap or small cap. The largest holdings include asset manager U.S. Global Investors, marketing firm Rewards Network and semiconductor firm IXYS.

The offering I'm probably most intrigued with isn't a specific bet as much as a strategy, a fund that allows individual investors to use a technique that has long been only the domain of large institutions. PowerShares DB G10 Currency Harvest is an exchange-traded commodity pool that tracks the index of the same name. Unlike many of the other currency products introduced recently, this fund isn't simply a bearish bet on the dollar but rather a long/short trade aiming for absolute return.

The strategy involves using what's called the "carry trade," or buying the currencies of countries with higher interest rates and shorting the currencies of those countries with lower interest rates. This approach has long been used by institutional investors in the over-the-counter forex markets, but this fund packages it into an off-the-shelf trade you can buy just as easily as General Electric.

The fund uses futures contracts on 10 major currencies including the U.S. dollar, euro, yen, Canadian dollar, British pound, New Zealand dollar, Norwegian krone, Swedish krona, Swiss franc and Australian dollar. Long positions are leveraged 2-to-1, and for this relatively complex bit of financial wizardry you pay a management fee of 0.75%, less than half of what you'd pay Bill Miller to pick stocks at Legg Mason Value Trust.

This isn't a biotech stock that you're going to wake up and find shooting up 10 points in the premarket. Still, over time, the results of the strategy have been attractive. The index's average annual return for the past year has been 11.48%, beating the S&P 500 by more than two percentage points while exhibiting less than half the volatility of the stock market. Even more attractive, the fund has a low 0.21% correlation to stocks, meaning it provides an attractive means of diversifying a portfolio.

As with every investment, you must conduct your own due diligence to determine if the funds meet your own portfolio needs and risk criteria. But in an age where new products are being rolled out at a rapid clip, each of these deserves a look for their innovative approaches.

Jonathan Hoenig is managing member at

Hedge Fund LLC. At the time of writing, Hoenig's fund held positions in many of the securities mentioned.