How to own a piece of Nashville

Nashville is hot right now. It has its own show on ABC and The New York Times says so. And now Nashville has gone public, as in you can invest in Nashville (businesses).

Last week, LocalShares, Inc. debuted the first city-centric investment fund in the United States. With the ticker symbol NASH on the New York Stock Exchange, the exchange-traded fund (ETF) allows the public to invest in more than two dozen large publicly-traded companies located in Nashville. To qualify to be included in the fund, the companies must have a market capitalization of more than $100 million and have more than 50,000 shares traded daily -- those include the likes of Cracker Barrel, Dollar General, and Tractor Supply Co. But as Next City points out, it's less about the companies and more about generating (and profiting from) civic pride.

If the fund is successful -- which wasn't the case of other location-based ETFs in Texas and Oklahoma -- expect more city-based ETFs from LocalShares in the future.

Since opening on August 1, NASH -- which one analyst called "the most absurd product to hit the market" -- hasn't deterred much from its opening value of $25.

Read more: Next City, LocalShares

Photo: Flickr/CJ Schmit

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com