How Are Uranium ETFs Doing?

Are plans to use nuclear power to provide electricity for proliferating data centers driving attractive performance for uranium exchange-traded-funds (ETF)? To investigate, we consider four such ETFs, all currently available:

• • VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF ETF (NLR) – picks stocks and depositary receipts of firms involved in uranium and nuclear energy.
  • Global X Uranium ETF (URA) – picks stocks of global companies involved in the uranium industry.
  • Sprott Uranium Miners ETF (URNM) – picks stocks of firms devoting at least 50% of assets to mining of uranium, holding physical uranium, owning uranium royalties or engaging in other activities that support uranium mining.
  • Sprott Junior Uranium Miners ETF (URNJ) – picks stocks of small firms devoting at least 50% of assets to mining of uranium, holding physical uranium, owning uranium royalties or engaging in other activities that support uranium mining.

We use Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE) as a benchmark. We also look at some performance results for SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) for perspective. We focus on monthly return statistics, along with compound annual growth rates (CAGR) and maximum drawdowns (MaxDD). Using monthly total returns for the four uranium ETFs as available and for XLE and SPY through February 2025, we find that: (more…)