September was a brutal month for equity markets around the globe, as anxiety over Europe and intensifying concerns about the growth prospects for many emerging markets hammered asset prices. The freefall in stock markets hit the bottom line of the ETF industry as well; despite another month of strong inflows, industry assets fell below the $1 trillion mark for the first time in several months. According to recent data from the National Stock Exchange, ETP assets finished the third quarter at about $973 billion, a decline of about 9% over the previous month. That slide came despite aggregate inflows into exchange-traded products of about $4.6 billion.Year-to-date inflows into ETFs totaled almost $79 billion through the first nine months, slightly ahead of the 2010 pace. [click to continue…]
Total ETF assets declined by almost 4% in August thanks to abysmal performances from equity markets around the globe. But the industry kept its monthly winning streak alive, managing to generate net inflows of about $2 billion during one of the worst months performance wise since late 2008. Not surprisingly, fixed income ETFs saw a [...]
Innovation in the bond ETF space in recent years has been truly impressive, resulting in the introduction of a number of products that allow investors to fine tune their fixed income exposure. While the most popular bond ETFs are those that offer broad-based exposure to a variety of issuers and maturities (such as AGG or [...]
It may be premature to hit the print button for the death certificate of active management, but changes to the investing landscape over the last several years have forced a reassessment of the value proposition this strategy offers. Research suggesting that active managers fail to add value is, of course, nothing new. Over the last [...]
First, the good news: all those fears about runaway inflation following from the massive injections of capital into financial markets appear to have been overblown. Now for the bad news: the alternative may be much worse. For months wary investors have been eagerly watching CPI reports, fearful of the release indicating that price increases are [...]
Earlier this month, InvestmentNews released a list of the ten ETFs financial advisors researched the most in 2009. The list, which was based on information provided by Morningstar, included several traditional inflation hedges, such as the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) and iShares COMEX Gold Trust (IAU), as well as the broad-based PowerShares DB Commodity Fund [...]
As interest in ETF investing has surged in recent years, issuers have rushed to expand their product lines into every corner of the investable universe. The first generation of ETF products consisted mostly of equity funds designed to track well-known benchmarks, and while the vast majority of ETF assets remains in these “plain vanilla” funds, [...]
Over the last year, U.S. equity markets have staged a remarkable recovery as volatility has plummeted and the emergency stimulus measures implemented amidst heated debate appear to have had their intended effect. Indications that unemployment may be close to peaking and that consumer confidence is on the rise once again only add fuel to the [...]
Earlier this year, best-selling author Harry Dent , Jr. ventured into the ETF industry, launching the Dent Tactical ETF (DENT) in a move that further blurred the lines between active and passive management. DENT is actively managed by a team of analysts using primarily economic and demographic analysis to determine the overall trend of U.S. [...]
