We talked about the Currency Harvest Fund from PowerShares a while back, but PowerShares and Deutsche Bank are teaming up for even more interesting funds… Just launched:

PowerShares DB Energy Fund (DBE)
PowerShares DB Oil Fund (DBO)
PowerShares DB Precious Metals Fund (DBP)
PowerShares DB Gold Fund (DGL)
PowerShares DB Silver Fund (DBS)
PowerShares DB Base Metals Fund (DBB)
PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund (DBA)

These would be added to the DBV (Currency Harvest) and DBC (Commodity Select) funds that have been out for a while…

One would have to ask — why are they re-inventing the wheel? Why would they launch DBO (Oil) when the USO ETF has been out since mid-April? One good reason — USO has consistently underperformed the actual price of oil since the fund’s launch. The case is less clear when you look at the gold/silver and precious metals funds.

The real gem though is the DBA fund for Agriculture. The fund is splitting the investment evenly across Corn, Wheat, Soybean, and Sugar. This is the first chance for people to invest directly in these commodities without opening a futures account or trying to find a company that produces the commodity.