So far in the first two weeks, performance has been shall we say, "Less than stellar." The index began its calculation on January 5th with a valuation of $1000. Friday, QGRI closed at $724.17 or a loss of 27.5%. Some of us in our personal 401k accounts managed to take all of last year to lose this much but the index that tracks government bailout programs accomplished this astounding feat in two short weeks.
You can't buy this index yet since the folks at Nasdaq haven't made it available for 3rd parties to form options in order to build products on top of the index, but they plan to. When it becomes available, you will be able to buy the index for its current market value if you believe the government is on the right footing with TARP and other bailout oriented concerns. A better bet would be to find a broker who offers shares of the index for shorting opportunities (or put options) since government bailouts have traditionally never produced the intended outcome.
The good news is that QGRI is the first index of the Government Relief Index Series that the Nasdaq plans on launching in the coming weeks. There will soon be many ways to officially track the failure of the US Government.
