In what was pretty much a complete reversal of yesterday’s trading session, stocks rose across the board as investors bought up shares on better-than-expected jobless claims which finally fell below the key 400,000 mark. The Dow surged by 423 points, or just under 4.0% while the broader indexes turned in better performances, with gains of 4.6% for the S&P 500 and 4.7% for the Nasdaq. Strength was all around the market but financials and basic materials did especially well, led by a nearly 7% gain in Bank of America and a 5.4% surge for Exxon Mobil. Meanwhile, in commodity markets, most resources had a pretty solid day with the exception of the precious metal market as gold and silver both finished the day markedly lower. Grains and energy, however, both surged on the day as hopes for economic demand boosted oil and worries over weather sent wheat and corn soaring. [click to continue…]
The ETF industry continues to expand at an impressive rate, with dozens of new products debuting every month and the size of the lineup quickly approaching the 1,300 mark. While each new month generally brings a number of new product launches, it also beings some important milestones for ETFs that have debuted in the past. [...]
The fixed income corner of the ETF industry has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, as investors have become increasingly comfortable with achieving bond exposure through the exchange-traded structure. In 2010 more than $26 billion flowed into bond ETFs, following a year that saw more than $42 billion in net inflows. During the first six [...]
Thursday marks the first day of trading for the WisdomTree Asia Local Debt Fund (ALD), an actively-managed ETF offering exposure to debt of a dozen developed and emerging Asia Pacific countries. The fund will invest primarily in local currency debt from issuers in South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, India, Thailand, Philippines, and [...]
Creativity on the product development front has become a defining characteristic of the ETF industry, as the surge in the number of ETF offerings in recent years has been driven not by duplication but by innovation. Many of the new fund launches are first-to-market concepts, offering exposure to asset classes or strategies not previously available [...]
State Street rolled out two new ETFs on Thursday, launching products offering exposure to emerging markets equities and fixed income securities. The SPDR Barclays Capital Emerging Markets Local Bond ETF (EBND) will seek to replicate a benchmark consisting of fixed-rate local currency sovereign debt of emerging market countries, while the SPDR S&P Emerging Markets Dividend [...]
In recent years, emerging markets have been established as the clear leaders of global GDP growth, while the economies of the U.S. and western Europe have stalled. Developed markets are facing stubbornly high unemployment and limited flexibility thanks to mounting debt burdens, while emerging markets continue to race ahead. In a recent economics paper, Goldman [...]
As ETFs have become increasingly popular among more active traders in recent years, it may be easy to forget that the vehicle was originally designed with the long-term buy-and-holder in mind. For those who take stock in the numerous academic studies indicating that active management generally destroys value over the long haul, cost efficient vehicles [...]
Over the past few years, investors’ comfort level with obtaining bond exposure via ETFs has increased rapidly as a multitude of new products have hit the market, slicing and dicing the fixed income space in new ways and enhancing the level of granularity available. While the proliferation of bond ETFs has touched virtually every sector [...]
No matter where investors look in the developed world, the picture isn’t pretty. In the U.S. unemployment remains intolerably high, and uncertainty over the latest round of QE will continue to hang over stock markets. In Europe efforts to control surging deficits have been met with protests and public outrage, complicating the process of reeling [...]
by Eric Dutram on October 22, 2010 | Updated April 20, 2011
As the ETF world continues to grow, the competitive landscape continues to evolve. In recent years, a growing number of firms have attempted to differentiate themselves by offering unique exposure to asset classes and strategies not previously available–such as funds tracking the Philippine stock market or ETNs linked to the price of industrial metals such [...]
