ETF Securities is planning to list 22 new currency Exchange Traded Commodity funds (ETCs) on the London Stock Exchange over the next few weeks, including four with exposure to emerging market currencies.

The new fund range includes 18 sterling-based currency ETCs with long or short exposure to a range of currencies from the Group of 10 nations, while the emerging market currency ETCs provide long or short exposure to the Chinese renminbi or the Indian rupee versus the US dollar.

While to date, the firm’s currency ETCs exposed to the Japanese yen, the Australian dollar, UK sterling and the euro have been the most popular, it said it has received a lot of investor interest about exposure to emerging market currencies.

All the currency ETCs are based on the MSFX Index Family, designed by Morgan Stanley as a tradeable benchmark for foreign exchange rate performance.

“With today’s financial crisis continuing…we’ve seen that investors are looking for liquid and transparent markets and thus currencies are starting to appear on their radar screens. In addition, currencies are driven by the macro environment which has shown high volatility in the past few years, and because currencies are valued relative to other currencies… if one goes up then the other must go down,” said Nik Bienkowski, chief operating officer at ETF Securities.