Van Eck Global has filed papers with the Securities & Exchange Commission for a new exchange-traded fund that will target small- and mid-cap gold and silver mining companies.

The filing contains few details, but the new Market Vector Metals ETF will follow a passive indexing strategy to capture a float-adjusted, market-cap-weighted index of smaller mining outfits.

When launched, the new fund will be the first small/mid cap mining ETF on the market. It will join the very successful Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSE Arca: GDX), which captures the large-cap segment of the gold mining market and has more than $4 billion in assets under management.

Small-cap miners have a notably different investment thesis than large-scale miners. Often, small-cap gold and silver mining companies are still in the research and exploration stage, and have not yet gone into commercial production. Many require periodic fundraising and infusions of capital to continue operations.

On the upside, they can provide very strong returns during bull markets for gold, allowing investors to make a more speculative and in many cases leveraged play on the gold and gold mining markets.

The new Van Eck filing is available here.

--This article was submitted by IndexUniverse.com’s Matt Hougan.