This past week was a brutal one for equity markets as a wave of selling crushed sectors across the board. The benchmark S&P 500 index saw its value decline by nearly 6.5% on the week, marking one of the roughest five day stretches in recent memory. Generally speaking, this decline was thanks to investors being pretty disappointed with the Fed’s new response to the markets as many were hoping for more of a boost than the $400 billion for “Operation Twist”. Due to this lack of more stimulus from the Fed, as well as continued turmoil in Europe, many investors capitulated and headed for safer assets such as Treasury bonds instead. Yet, even traditional safe havens, such as gold and silver, saw heavy selling pressure as well; GLD finished the week lower by 9.2% and SLV was down 23.9% in the same time period. In other words, it was a pretty rough couple of days all around leaving those invested in volatility ETPs or Treasury funds as the only winners in the devastating week.
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Van Eck has filed details for what would be the first ETF to offer exposure to small cap Indonesian stocks, laying the groundwork for further expansion in the ETF industry. The recent SEC filing shed some light on the proposed Market Vectors Indonesia Small-Cap ETF, which would join a pair of other products offering exposure [...]
While 2011 may have gotten off to a good start for many equity markets, a summer slowdown has hit stocks across the globe. Worries over the fallout from a downgrade of American debt have now shifted to concerns over more stimulus either by the Federal Reserve or by Congress. Yet more measures coming down the [...]
Ed Kuczma is a member of the Investment Team at Van Eck Global, a firm that has a number of ETFs targeting various corners of the market both in equities and in bonds. Currently, Ed specializes in the EMEA region, doing analysis on the various markets that make up these emerging regions. One of the [...]
Van Eck, the issuer behind a number of country-specific emerging markets ETFs, recently laid the groundwork to launch what would be the industry’s first Mongolia ETF. In an SEC filing last week, the company outlined an ETF that would seek to replicate a to-be-determined index that would consist of companies domiciled and primarily listed on [...]
This past week marked the start to earnings season, and for the most part the reports disappointed investors and sparked sell-offs. One of the most important reports to hit the market this week came from banking giant JP Morgan. The firm reported a huge profit increase of 67% but sluggish revenues and little revenue growth [...]
Van Eck has become the latest ETF issuer to announce ETF fee reductions, lowering the expense ratios on two of its country-specific international ETFs. Effective January 26, the expense cap on the Market Vectors Indonesia Index ETF (IDX) was lowered from 0.68% to 0.60%. The expense cap on the Market Vectors Poland Index ETF (PLND) [...]
Wall Street started the trading week on a downward note, with talks of a Portugal bailout sending equities lower across the board. Gold managed to post a small gain for the session alongside a weaker dollar but the yellow metal is still struggling to regain lost ground following its sharp sell-off last week. Meanwhile, other [...]
With the new year just around the corner, it seems as if 2010 will go down as a generally positive year for investors. Despite numerous and somewhat serious lingering concerns over the health of the global economy, most asset classes have posted impressive gains on the year as the odds of a “double dip” have [...]
Last year, the U.S. hit the bottom of one of the worst recessions in its history. Though the year started out on a sour note–stocks plunged for the first two months of 2009–markets finally bottomed out in early March, and then began a furious rally that saw many asset classes reclaim some of the ground [...]
As investors have grown more comfortable allocating more significant portions of portfolios to emerging markets, the number of ETFs offering exposure to these regions of the world has surged in recent years. Exchange-traded products now exist offering investors exposure to a variety of markets that were once hard-to-access for all but the largest and most [...]
