airplaneRemember Healthshares, the family of ETF’s focusing on 15 more or less narrow medical research areas? After languishing for over a year in the markets, they were all finally closed down a few months ago due to lack of investor interest.

Claymore today introduced a new ETF that just like Healthshares should find no home in any serene investor’s portfolio. FAA, the first index fund for a global index of Airlines, really doesn’t fill any hole that needs to be filled, except for the pie hole of whoever sold this idea to Claymore.

The airline sector sucks in every aspect imaginable. With exception of Southwest it seems like pretty much every airline in the U.S. is constantly in and out of bankruptcy protection. The average long-term performance of the sector is abysmal. They are susceptible to any kind of economic bad news, oil price shock, terrorist attack, plan crash, biological scare, you name it. They have huge fixed costs that pretty much put the final nails in their coffins during recessions.

If you want a good laugh, look at the factsheet of this thing:

* Huge historical underperformance? Check (-6 % per year over the last 7 years).

* Twice as much risk as the MSCI World Index? Check (Standard Deviation: 35.28 % for airlines vs. 15.53 % for MSCI)

* Negative correlation to oil? Check. (So if oil goes up, airlines tend to go down. Great hedge for oil price shocks – NOT)

So why in the world would you want to own this thing? Maybe if you love planes. Certainly not if you love money.