iShares, by far the most active ETF issuer on the product development front to this point in 2012, continued the aggressive expansion of its international ETF lineup this week with the debut of a new product targeting small cap Indian stocks. The new MSCI India Small Cap Index Fund (SMIN) becomes the third product to specifically target small Indian companies. SMIN will complement existing ETFs from iShares that target primarily large Indian companies, including the S&P India Nifty 50 Index Fund (INDY) and the recently-launched MSCI India Index Fund (INDA). [click to continue…]
VelocityShares has significantly increased its leveraged ETP lineup, recently announcing eight new products that offer amplified exposure to various natural resources. The new ETNs will offer 3x and -3x exposure to natural gas, crude oil, and Brent crude, as well as 2x and -2x products targeting indexes comprised of copper futures. The new ETNs will join a VelocityShares lineup that already includes products offering leveraged exposure to gold (UGLD, DGLD), silver (USLV, DSLV), platinum (LPLT, IPLT), and palladium (LPAL, IPAL). [click to continue…]
Global X announced today the launch of the Permanent ETF (PERM), a new fund that will offer one stop exposure to a number of core asset classes. The new ETF will be linked to the Solactive Permanent Index, a benchmark that includes three major asset classes: stocks, Treasuries, and precious metals. Each of those broad [...]
With more than 40% of the U.S. market, iShares has long been the leader in the U.S. ETF industry. But in recent years the competition has been gaining ground, thanks in part to more cost efficient products. According to the ETF Industry Association, Vanguard led all ETF issuers with almost $36 billion in cash inflows [...]
As indexes have been essentially transformed into investable assets in part because of surging interest in ETFs, many advisors and investors have begun to take a closer look at the details of the methodologies behind the construction and maintenance of these benchmarks. Cap weighting, where the largest weights are afforded to the largest companies, has [...]
iShares continued its torrid pace of product development with yet another first-to-market ETF, rolling out a fund targeting small cap Asian stocks excluding Japan. The new iShares MSCI All Country Asia ex Japan Small Cap Index Fund (AXJS) is the first to specifically target small cap stocks in that geographic segment, though a handful of [...]
iShares continued to debut new products at an impressive pace on Friday with the introduction of another India ETF. The new MSCI India ETF (INDA) will list on the BATS, joining several other iShares funds on the third-largest U.S. exchange. Last month iShares became the first ETF issuer to list on the BATS, spurning the [...]
For advisors and individual investors looking to further their “ETF education,” there is an abundance of material within reach that covers both elementary and advanced aspects of ETF investing. Unfortunately, there’s also quite a bit of bad information out there as well–and separating the wheat from the chaff is sometimes a tall task. Below are [...]
For advisors utilizing ETFs in client portfolios, the details matter. Whether it be the difference in product structure, weighting methodology, or degree of currency exposure, seemingly minor details often end up having a rather significant impact on bottom line returns and overall volatility. The importance of nuanced elements of product structures is particularly important when [...]
iShares, the largest U.S. ETF issuer in terms of both assets and number of funds, continued the aggressive expansion of its product lineup this week with five new products offering exposure to commodity-related stocks. Each of the new ETFs will compete with existing products offering indirect exposure to natural resources through stocks of companies that [...]
The team at ETF Database has been hard at work developing a number of new features and tools for use on ETFdb.com. In addition to keeping track of the growing lineup of exchange-traded products, we’ve rolled out a number of new sections of the site that have been designed with financial advisors in mind. The [...]
When the Federal Reserve announced recently that it plans to keep key interest rates at nearly zero until 2014, it hardly came as a surprise. With the economic recovery still in a very fragile state and inflationary pressures remaining tame, record low interest rates are expected to hang around for quite a while. While stock [...]
