Last month, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke unveiled the latest creation from the central bank – the infamous QE3. As details continue to emerge about the next round of quantitative easing, many investors, including a number of hot-shot analysts and experts, have been weighing in on how they believe the new stimulus measures will pan out. Some have received the Fed’s new plan with open arms, while others remain understandably skeptical if not down right opposed to QE3. And now that the eurozone, Japan and the United States have all set out their new monetary policies, the printing presses will be working overtime as these three global heavy hitters line up to pump trillions of dollars into their economies. Now investors are faced with the daunting task of trying to quantify and project the implications of these massive programs – will money printing “stimulate” the economy, or will the onslaught of currency supplies only do more harm than good? [see 101 ETF Lessons Every Advisor Should Learn].
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No one can argue just how far the ETF industry has come since the debut of the first ever exchange-traded fund in 1993. The investment landscape now boasts a lineup of nearly 1,500 offerings, allowing investors to gain cheap and easy access to nearly every corner of the investable universe. From the plain-vanilla funds to [...]
Thus far, 2012 has proven to be a rather rocky year, with equities exhibiting up and down performances and struggling to find a definitive direction. The hoopla surrounding the eurozone debt debacle and the Fed’s “elusive” future stimulus programs have hindered markets from gaining any significant and sustainable momentum. Taking a look from a year-to-year perspective [...]
ProShares added a pair of products designed for investors looking to bet on the short term performance of the often volatile financial sector today. Two new ETFs, the ProShares UltraPro Financials (FINU) and ProShares UltraPro Short Financials (FINZ) will offer 300% daily leveraged exposure to the Dow Jones U.S. Financials Index, a benchmark that consists [...]
Under the umbrella of exchange-traded products, ETNs have attracted far less interest than their ETF cousins and now represent only a small portion of total ETP assets. Exchange-traded notes are debt instruments linked to the performance of an index, and as a result there won’t be any tracking error with these products. Although these investment vehicles [...]
ETFs have gathered more than $1 trillion in assets thanks to a number of structural advantages, including enhanced transparency, significant tax advantages, and intraday liquidity. But make no mistake about it: the ETF boom has been fueled in large part by an increased attention to expenses, and intensifying desire among investors to minimize their fees. [...]
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have burst on to the scene in the last few years, raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in assets and prompting a major shift towards indexing strategies in the process. ETFs have empowered financial advisors (FAs), registered investment advisors (RIAs), Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), money managers, and retail investors to take [...]
At times, it seems as if the number of ETFs available to U.S. investors will soon exceed the number of stars in the sky. That might be overstating things a bit, but the pace of expansion in the ETF industry has truly been impressive over the last several years. With multiple products seemingly debuting every [...]
As the ETF universe has expanded by leaps and bounds in recent years, investors now have tools at their disposal to accomplish almost every objective. From plain vanilla stock and bond indexes to hyper-targeted regional and sector funds, there are ETFs to bet on just about every asset class. And there are also a number [...]
ProShares announced last week an expansion to its lineup of 3x leveraged ETFs, rolling out a fund that delivers -3x daily exposure to long-term U.S. Treasuries. The new UltraPro Short 20+ Year Treasury (TTT) will seek to deliver daily results that correspond to -300% of movements in the Barclays Capital U.S. 20+ Year Treasury Index, a [...]
UBS continued to expand its lineup of monthly leveraged ETPs this month, debuting a product that is designed to deliver amplified exposure to international real estate firms. The new Monthly Pay 2x Leveraged Dow Jones International Real Estate ETN (RWXL) will deliver leveraged exposure to a benchmark that consists of REITs from around the world, [...]
