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Christine St Anne is Morningstar's online funds and ETFs editor.

The Australian sharemarket gained ground earlier this week. This surge was again led by the energy and materials sectors.

The strength of the mining boom has underpinned the performance of the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and investors have taken advantage of the boom through investments in resource stocks or physical commodities.

There are also opportunities for investors to get a broader exposure to a number of resource stocks and commodities in a single, low-cost transaction through exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

State Street Global Advisors recently launched a resource-sector exchange-traded fund, the SPDR S&P/ASX 200 Resources Fund (OZR).

The OZR is now the fifth ETF covering the mining and energy sectors to trade on the ASX.

The other three mining and energy ETFs are managed by Australian Index Investments and includes the Aii S&P/ASX 200 Resources (RSR), the Aii S&P/ASX 200 Energy ETF (ENY) and the Aii S&P/ASX 300 Mining and Metals ETF (MAM).

BetaShares earlier this year launched a synthetic ETF, the BetaShares S&P/ASX 200 Resources ETF (QRE). 

"These ETFs allow investors to have dedicated resource exposures in their portfolios," Morningstar co-head of research Tim Murphy says.

"Investors, however, need to be mindful that these ETFs also own the top three resource companies including BHP Billiton (BHP), Rio Tinto (RIO) and Woodside (WPL), stocks that normally make up large part of an investor's portfolio."

While these ETFs give investors exposure to these big mining companies, they do track indexes that include mid-cap stocks in the resources sector.

Top holdings in the ENY include Aquila Resources (AQA), Whitehaven Coal (WHC) and Aurora Oil & Gas (AUT). The MAM is based on a broader index of stocks, with Atlas Iron (AGO), Sims Metal Management (SGM) and Lynas Corporation (LYC) among its top holdings.

The OZR includes companies in the S&P/ASX 200 Index that are involved in the metals and mining industry (broadly classified as aluminium, non-ferrous metal mining, salt and borate mining, phosphate rock mining, gold and precious metals, producers of iron and steel and related products) and energy (including oil and natural gas, steaming and coking coal, coal seam methane gas and uranium).