State Street SPDR S&P North American Natural Resources ETF (NANR)

The State Street SPDR S&P North American Natural Resources ETF (NANR) is a sector-focused fund that holds companies engaged in the discovery, extraction, and sale of natural resources — oil, natural gas, metals, and timber across North America — and rises and falls with the commodity cycles that drive returns in that sector.

NANR is a deliberately narrow play. It does not hold a cross-section of the market; it holds companies whose business is literally pulling value out of the ground. That focus means NANR is a cyclical, commodity-sensitive vehicle, not a balanced exposure to the broader stock market. When oil prices climb, gold rallies, or natural-gas futures surge, NANR tends to rally with them. When commodity demand collapses — as it does in severe recessions or during demand shocks like the 2020 pandemic contraction — the fund can fall sharply.

The fund is sponsored by State Street, one of the three largest providers of index-tracking ETFs globally, alongside Vanguard and Blackrock. State Street’s SPDR line (the name originated as “Spider” and now stands for Standard & Poor’s Depository Receipt) is one of the oldest and largest ETF families. The index that NANR tracks is compiled and maintained by S&P Dow Jones Indices, a subsidiary of S&P Global, which selects and weights companies in the natural-resources space according to transparent, rules-based criteria.

What the index contains

The S&P North American Natural Resources Index includes companies that generate at least 50% of their revenue from natural-resource extraction and processing. That is a strict threshold, meaning the fund’s holdings are almost entirely dedicated to energy and materials — not diversified conglomerates with a small mining division.

The index’s largest components typically fall into three buckets:

Energy (oil, gas, and related services). This is often the largest weight within the fund. Integrated oil and gas majors — large-cap companies with global operations — sit alongside smaller independent producers focused on shale oil, deepwater drilling, or natural-gas assets. Service companies that support energy extraction, such as drillers and offshore-platform operators, also fall here.

Metals and mining. Gold producers, copper miners, silver refiners, and companies that mine rare earths and battery metals (lithium, cobalt, nickel) populate this segment. As electric-vehicle adoption has accelerated and energy storage demand has grown, battery-metal miners have become a larger weight within the natural-resources bucket.

Materials and timber. Diversified commodity producers that extract phosphates, potash, and agricultural chemicals; forest-products companies that harvest and process timber; and cement and other materials producers round out the third component.

The index is market-cap weighted within each of these segments, meaning the largest companies by market value have the largest influence on the fund’s performance. That results in significant concentration — a handful of mega-cap energy or materials stocks often drive the fund’s daily and quarterly returns.

Costs and tracking

NANR carries an expense ratio of approximately 0.40% annually, modest for a sector-specific ETF but higher than mega-cap broad-market funds. The fund tracks the S&P index with reasonable precision, typically within a tracking error of less than 0.10% annually, which is good enough that you receive nearly the full index exposure you are paying for.

The fund trades with substantial liquidity. Daily volume is high enough that retail investors face tight bid-ask spreads, and institutions can build or exit positions without meaningful slippage. That accessibility makes NANR straightforward to buy and sell at fair prices.

The cyclical case and the risks

NANR is not a “set and forget” holding for most investors. It is a tactical, cyclical exposure — a bet on commodity demand and producer profitability rising, falling, and rising again with economic cycles and energy transitions. Investors who buy NANR are typically either trading the cycle or deliberately overweighting their portfolio’s exposure to natural-resources stocks as a hedge against inflation or currency debasement (a historically sound bet, though not guaranteed).

The largest risks are cyclicality and energy transition. Commodity prices are set in global markets and respond to supply shocks, geopolitical events, demand surprises, and macro-economic stress. A recession can quickly halve or quarter the fund’s value. Separately, the long-term shift away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy means that oil and gas companies face structural headwinds over decades. Copper and battery metals may benefit from electrification, but coal producers and some integrated energy companies will face margin pressure and demand decline as the economy decarbonizes.

Concentration is another risk. A few mega-cap energy or materials companies can comprise 30% to 50% of the fund’s weight, so individual company earnings misses or management errors can move the entire fund sharply.

How to research it

Review the fund’s fact sheet to see the current index holdings and weights. Compare NANR’s performance during different commodity cycles — bull markets in oil, bear markets in metals — to understand its behavior. Check commodity prices and how they have trended; NANR’s future will be shaped far more by oil or copper futures than by any decision made in a boardroom. And consider whether you have a genuine view on where commodity demand is heading — if you are simply guessing, holding NANR is a wager, not an investment thesis.