From the category archives:
As the popularity of ETFs has surged in recent years, so too has the number of funds available to investors. With well more than 900 exchange-traded products listed on U.S. exchanges, some have speculated that the ETF industry has “gone into absolute overdrive”, and that the wave of new product launches that continues to wash over the space is unsustainable. [click to continue…]
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After enjoying a record year in 2010, many in the ETF industry were disappointed when January figures revealed a material decline in total assets, breaking an impressive string of month-over-month expansion. The latest ETF statistics from the National Stock Exchange are out, and February results were more typical of the industry’s recent growth. Total ETF assets increased from about $745 billion to $765 billion, while monthly cash inflows totaled $5.4 billion. [click to continue…]
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Legg Mason appears ready to make its long anticipated move into the active ETF space. The Baltimore-based asset management firm filed for approval with the SEC that would allow it to introduce actively-managed ETFs to U.S. markets. Filing for exemptive relief is one of the first steps on the road to launching ETFs, and requires [...]
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The ETF industry has expanded rapidly in recent years, with hundreds of new product launches covering various regions, sectors, and investment strategies. The surge in ETF product offerings–there are now nearly 1,000 exchange-traded products in our ETF screener–has sparked some speculation that the industry has reached a point of saturation–or perhaps has long since blown [...]
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A group led by financial services firm Guggenheim Partners, which bought Lisle, Illinois-based ETF issuer Claymore last year, has reached a deal to acquire Security Benefit Corp., the parent company of ETF issuer Rydex SGI.The group led by Guggenheim will make an investment of approximately $400 million for a controlling interest in Security Benefit. According [...]
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San Francisco-based iShares, which was acquired by BlackRock from Barclays last year, has more than 180 U.S.-listed ETFs. But the distribution of assets is far from even across these funds. At the end of 2009, the ten largest iShares ETFs–only about five percent of the issuer’s product line–accounted for 50% of total assets. So there’s [...]
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WisdomTree, the New York-based ETF issuer best known for its line of fundamentals-weighted and currency ETFs, reported on Monday its operating results for the fourth quarter of 2009. Most ETF issuers are either privately held or operated as divisions of larger public companies, meaning that gaining insight into the financial health of the industry can [...]
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Last year saw more than 100 new product launches, ranging from plain vanilla equity and bond funds to ETFs offering exposure to exotic new investment strategies and asset classes previously available only to a limited slice of the investing community. The innovation that has made ETFs a popular alternative to mutual funds seems ready to [...]
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Whenever a company prepares for a public offering, executives have been known to spend an inordinate amount of time choosing the combination of letters that will serve as the company’s ticker and often nickname within the investment community. To many, the fixation on selecting the perfect ticker seems like an irrational obsession on par with [...]
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Fidelity Investments announced today that it will offer its retail customers commission-free online trades for a suite of 25 iShares ETFs. The funds included in the commission-free platform include ETFs in all nine domestic equity style/size categories, as well as international equity and fixed income options. “Fidelity has partnered with the leading ETF provider in [...]
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ETFs have come along way in their relatively short existence, evolving from plain vanilla funds tracking major equity benchmarks to include more exotic products such as ETFs with triple leverage, and ETFs that employ long/short strategies, hedge fund tracking ETFs, and actively-managed funds. While some investors point to the several dozen funds that have struggled [...]
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Coming soon to an ETF near you: Warren Buffett. Well not exactly, but shares of Berkshire Hathaway, the company run by the “Oracle of Omaha” will soon be included in the S&P 500 Index and find a home in many of the most popular large-cap and all-cap ETFs.
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