A growing number of financial advisors are using exchange-traded funds to achieve international equity exposure for their clients, embracing funds that offer access to both developed and international market beyond the U.S. This should hardly be surprising; the exchange-traded structure delivers an efficient way to tap into an asset class that should be at the core of most long-term, buy-and-hold portfolios–especially in an environment that sees the U.S. market struggling mightily to gain traction.
Those looking to keep the portfolio construction process simple tend to gravitate towards broad-based ETFs that offer exposure to a number of different economies. Some of the most popular international stock ETFs are those linked to the MSCI Emerging Markets Index and MSCI EAFE Index, two benchmarks that offer deep, balanced exposure to developing and advanced economies outside the U.S., respectively. [click to continue…]
Financial advisors and individual investors who have embraced ETFs are generally painted as a cost conscious crowd, passing over expensive active mutual funds in favor of cheap indexing strategies. In general ETFs are considerably cheaper than mutual funds, thanks not only to the indexing strategy but also to the more efficient exchange-traded structure. But not [...]
Today brought new meaning to the phrase one step forward, two steps back. After a bustling October, one of the best months for stocks in the last decade, November has gotten off to a terrible start. Markets tanked today as investors mulled over worsening fears of debt issues abroad. Today saw almost no major asset [...]
Russell, the longtime index provider in the midst of a major push into the ETF issuer business, continued the rapid expansion of its product lineup this week with the introduction of its first international equity funds. The company launched three new funds focusing on developed markets outside of the U.S., with each targeting exposure based [...]
As ETFs have burst on to the scene in recent years, just about every serious investor and professional money manager has taken a crash course in exchange-traded products, becoming familiar with the countless benefits and nuances of these products. Features such as enhanced transparency, upgraded tax efficiency, and low costs are generally well known at [...]
Friday was another solid day for markets as investors cheered the results of a number of earnings reports and continued hopes over the European debt crisis. Every major asset class topped off the week in the black, as the Dow posted the most impressive gains at just over 2.3%. The S&P 500 raked in 22.8 [...]
iShares, the largest issuer of ETFs in the U.S. by total assets, rolled out another suite of funds on Thursday that offer targeted exposure to domestic and international equity markets. The new iShares minimum volatility ETFs are the latest in a trend of products targeting specific investment factors and disciplines, following similar offerings in recent [...]
The impressive pace of expansion in the ETF industry over the last several years has been well documented; continuous product development has resulted in the launch of more than 250 so far in 2011, and there are now more than 1,300 names in the ETF lineup. But while the depth of the ETF space has [...]
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 [...]
Most investors constructing an equity portfolio using ETFs would segment the asset class into three distinct sections: U.S. equities, emerging markets, and ex-U.S. developed markets. The least exciting of those three is probably the last one, given the dismal performances turned in by Europe and Japan in recent years, as well as the significant obstacles [...]
Any investor who hasn’t been living under a rock probably has some idea as to why the ETF industry has been expanding so quickly over the last several years. Intra-day liquidity, enhanced tax efficiencies, and a degree of transparency not available in many other structures are all common causes of the explosive growth in both [...]
