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 to reignite optimism. According to a recent survey by Bank of America, global investors have started 2012 with fairly bullish prospects and greater appetite for risk [see also 12 Rapid Fire ETF Ideas For 2012].
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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 [...]
As the lineup of exchange-traded products has expanded dramatically in recent years, financial advisors have found themselves with more tools at their disposal than ever before. The extreme granularity of many of the equity products out there allows for cheap, low maintenance targeting of specific corners of the investable universe, while the development of some [...]
Over the last several years ETFs have become popular tools for active investors seeking to take advantage of short-term mispricings in the market; the average daily trading volumes on many of the most popular-exchange-traded products clearly indicates that ETFs are widely used by day traders who measure their holding periods in minutes rather than years. [...]
Equity markets have gotten off to a solid start in the new year, although looming Euro zone debt woes continue to breed some degree of pessimism and one piece of bad news from overseas is very well capable of sparking a broad sell-off that spills over onto Wall Street. The tug of war between positive [...]
After a tumultuous 2011 many investors are still finding their footing in the markets as confidence in the global economic recovery remains battered down. Despite persistent volatility in financial markets coupled with a looming debt crisis in Europe, the U.S. economy has demonstrated tremendous resilience; investors on the home front have digested platefuls of better-than-expected [...]
Industry newcomer QuantShares broke ground in late 2011 with its release of a full suite of intriguing market neutral ETFs. Each of the firm’s products are linked to an equal-weighted index that is both dollar neutral and sector neutral, offering long/short exposure to sub-sets of broader indexes. Bill DeRoche, chairman and CEO, recently took time [...]
The year-end periods provides the ETF industry with a couple of opportunities to flex its collective muscle; performance comparisons generally tend to favor those products with lower expense ratios–a defining feature of exchange-traded funds. But early January also puts another benefit of exchange-traded products into focus: enhanced tax efficiency relative to traditional mutual funds. The [...]
One of the most noteworthy innovations in the ETF industry over the last several years has been the development of funds that deliver targeted exposure to investment “factors”, allowing for easy access to techniques that previously required extensive research and maintenance. From high momentum to low beta, there are now ETFs that slice and dice [...]
Investors rang in the new year with plenty of activity in just the first week of trading in 2012. Markets welcomed better than expected U.S. employment data, which showed that job growth accelerated and the unemployment rate dropped lower in the month of December. The positive report helped boost hope for a strengthening labor market [...]
Sometimes the simplest solution is the most effective. That certainly seemed to be the case when it comes to dividend-focused exchange-traded products in 2011. As investors have sought to enhance current return profiles while scaling back the risk of equity investments, the landscape has become cluttered with ETPs targeting stocks of dividend-paying companies. Currently there [...]
