Exchange-traded funds offering exposure to Commodity Producers Equities have become a popular tool for those looking to make an indirect play on natural resource prices. These funds offer investors the ability to easily tap into the lucrative commodities market through a diversified basket of companies, while still reaping the cost efficiency benefits associated with the exchange-traded product structure. Investors who wish to access the mining sector have a number of options available at their fingertips; and while these products may appear similar, a closer look under the hood reveals some noteworthy differences [see also Does GLD Really Hold Gold, Or is it a Scam?].
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State Street, the firm behind the two largest ETFs, announced this week the addition of two new international equity funds to its product lineup. The SPDR MSCI ACWI IMI ETF (ACIM) will offer exposure to global equity markets, casting a wide net across both developed and emerging markets. The SPDR EM 50 ETF (EMFT) will [...]
Most investors looking to generate alpha and accumulate wealth over the long term spend the bulk of their time determining which asset classes should be included in their portfolio, either as long-term building blocks or shorter-term tactical allocations. But sometimes the most effective means of generating excess returns is not identifying and overweighting the top [...]
The world is always ending, according to someone out there. The current environment is full of those who think the end is nigh–at least for the robust global economy to which we’ve grown accustomed. Let’s suppose that our economy is about to fall off a cliff, resulting in general chaos, what’s the average investor supposed [...]
Although uncertainty continues to linger across financial markets, investors’ confidence in the global economic recovery has without a doubt improved considerably going forward, shaking off much of last year’s pessimism. Debt negotiations in the Euro zone have played a key role in ensuring stability, while better-than-expected economic data releases on the home front have helped [...]
AdvisorShares added to its rapidly-growing lineup of active ETFs today with the debut of the Accuvest Global Opportunities ETF (ACCU), which utilizes country-specific ETFs with the goal of generating excess returns relative to benchmarks such as the MSCI All Country World Index. Accuvest, the portfolio manager of the new ETF, utilizes a proprietary country ranking [...]
The unfriendly economic landscape from 2011 has been gradually evolving into a much more optimistic environment in the new year as confidence has improved across the board. Better-than-expected corporate earnings, manufacturing output, housing sales, and encouraging employment reports have all paved the way higher for stocks as investors are rejoicing over clear cut signs of [...]
With ETF product development off to a robust start in 2012, issuers are continuing to fill the pipeline with new ideas. Industry veteran PowerShares filed with the SEC to bring to market tw0 active ETFs while First Trust has laid the groundwork to beef up its AlphaDEX lineup. Relative newcomer FlexShares made plans for a [...]
iShares has made another round of additions to its ETF lineup of well more than 200 products, debuting funds that target small cap stocks in Hong Kong and Singapore. The company also debuted an ETF linked to the MSCI World Index, a broad benchmark of stocks in developed markets:
With over 300 product launches in 2011, the ETF industry has been steaming with activity on all fronts. Issuers, both big and small, have been firing on all cylinders; debuting waves of first-to-market products while also filling the product development pipeline with exciting plans [see The Five Biggest ETF Inflows Of 2011]. Among the wave [...]
Light trading volumes and sparse activity on the product development front are to be expected in the final week of what has shaped out to be one of the most volatile years in financial history. Industry giant iShares has laid down the groundwork for three actively-managed equity ETFs targeting popular broad market sectors [see Active [...]
