If you've been hankering for exposure to funds focused solely on lead, cocoa and tin, then you're in luck.

Debuting today on the London Stock Exchange are 33 new leveraged exchange-traded commodities from ETF Securities. The company also launched four new commodity-based ETCs tracking Dow Jones-AIG commodity indexes. Those will offer leveraged and shorting opportunities to traders in the new areas of lead, cocoa and tin as well as platinum.

But watch out, since these new leveraged ETFs are designed to earn two times the daily percent change in their underlying index before fees and interest. For example, if an index increases by 1% in a day, a
leveraged ETC will rise by 2%. However, if it loses on any given day, just the opposite takes place-you'll lose roughly twice as much.

Of course, the sponsors of these new ETCs are promoting the use of such leverage as a way to hedge your portfolio's bets. With the credit crisis still spreading, leverage can be used to free up money for investors to use elsewhere as a diversification tool.

While that can play out in several different ways, advisors warn that these sorts of niche commodities vehicles can be much more volatile than the broader stock market. They can also be tricky to handle as hedging techniques and are most commonly associated with traders and professional portfolio managers specializing in such market-neutral or similar strategies.

Still, the 110 ETCs created by ETF Securities have proved popular. According to the firm's own publicity circulated on Monday, in 13 weeks since it started bringing out the bulk of its ETCs, assets have grown 150% to more than $5 billion with trading volume over $120 million per day on five European exchanges.

The new leveraged ETCs tracking existing indexes cover: aluminum, coffee, copper, corn, cotton, crude oil, gasoline, gold, heating oil, lean hogs, live cattle, natural gas, nickel, silver soybean oil, soybeans, sugar, wheat, zinc and grains.

In addition, several new ETCs launched that track existing DJ-AIG indexes. Those include: all commodities, agriculture, energy, grains, industrial metal, livestock, petroleum and precious metals.

ETCs released on Monday in Europe of new DJ-AIG indexes for cocoa, lead, platinum and tin offer a version for taking short positions and a corresponding sister fund for leveraged investors.