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Andy H

Wednesday saw a significant reduction to the growth seen in the first two days of February, as the health care sector weighed on major benchmarks. Major earnings reports were mixed, with Cisco beating estimates (after the bell) and Pfizer falling short. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke was sworn in to a second term, arguing in support of the central bank’s independence while promising to bring increased transparency to the organization as well. [click to continue…]

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Thursday marked a second consecutive day of chaos on Wall Street, as an Obama proposal to curtail risks taken by banks weighed on the financial sector. Commodity producers saw shares plummet as well, as concerns that governments are beginning to pull back support plans impacted expectations for global growth. After the bell, Google reported that its fourth quarter earnings surged more than 33% from the same period a year ago as the company was successful expanding its business into new areas, such as its Nexus Once cellphone aimed to compete with the iPhone. Despite beating analyst estimates, Google’s shares sunk as much as 5% in after hours trading. [click to continue…]

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It’s no secret that actively managed funds have fallen out of fashion. Many big names have touted the benefits of financial instruments that track an index, and ETFs such as SPY and VTI have enjoyed huge asset inflows as a result. Legendary investor Warren Buffett is even on board, announcing that “a very low-cost index [...]

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I read The Reformed Broker’s recent post, ETF Inflation and Brown’s Law of Wall Street Product Creation, with some interest, as we cover so many new ETF launches here at ETFdb. By the way, although you could call this post a rebuttal to that link, I do have a lot of respect for The Reformed [...]

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Over the last several years, ongoing innovation in the ETF industry has led to flurries of new product launches offering exposure to new asset classes and increasingly remote geographic areas. One of the most interesting current areas of new product development focuses on faith-based investing, the concept of considering compliance with religious laws and values [...]

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Investors turned towards Washington D.C. on Wednesday, as Congress struck a deal on a health care bill that earned the president’s approval. The agreement marked a big step forward, but battle on health care seems to be far from over, with several lawmakers eagerly awaiting a cost assessment. Elsewhere, concerns over some governments’ finances sent [...]

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The beginning of December brought more good news for the ETF industry, as cash continued to flow in and innovative new products continued to gain traction with investors. It was an active week on Wall Street as well, with a pleasant surprise from the jobs front wrapping up a week that saw continued rises in [...]

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As the stock market continues to rise, seemingly running ahead of fundamentals, more and more investors are becoming concerned that the stocks are becoming overvalued, and that a downward correction may be just around the corner. While safe haven investments such as the U.S. dollar and gold are popular picks for investors looking to profit [...]

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The label “gold bug” may suggest a kooky old man who spends a lot of time in his basement reading conspiracy theory newsletters. The truth, however, is that there are many legitimate reasons to trade in gold and its derivatives. Gold has been proven time and time again to be an excellent “safe haven” investment, [...]

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Direct investment in crude oil products used to be limited to major financial institutions and oil companies themselves, but the development of the ETF industry in the U.S. has democratized the investment process in many ways, including making investments in various oil products accessible to average investors. There are a number of exchange-traded products that [...]

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September was one of the most active months in the ETF industry in recent memory. We saw a wave of new fund launches from industry leaders and smaller players alike, along with perhaps the first of many commodity fund closures. September saw the introduction of another actively-managed ETF, proposals on several more innovative funds, and [...]

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ETFs have become the ‘hot’ product in the investment world in the past few years. Hobbyist investors and day traders were some of the initial cheerleaders, but now financial advisors are driving asset inflows up–both because of client demand, and also the intrinsic value and efficiency of the product. Unfortunately high-level analysis of ETFs, contextualized [...]

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