Last year saw more than 100 new product launches, ranging from plain vanilla equity and bond funds to ETFs offering exposure to exotic new investment strategies and asset classes previously available only to a limited slice of the investing community. The innovation that has made ETFs a popular alternative to mutual funds seems ready to continue through2010. Based on discussions with industry executives and others covering the industry, it seems like a safe bet that 2010 will shatter existing records for new ETF launches.
But there has also been some concern over saturation in the ETF industry, as well more than 100 funds currently have less than $10 million in assets. Hype around the launch of new products doesn’t always translate into sustained investor demand. While many investors and advisors are looking forward to some of the exciting products in the pipeline for 2010, we take a look back, checking in on ten of the most interesting ETFs launched in 2009 (we should note the the numbers don’t reflect a ranking of any sort). [click to continue…]
Given the tremendous amount of buzz surrounding the launch of the first U.S.-listed platinum and palladium ETFs earlier this month, perhaps the initial results for the ETFS Physical Platinum Shares (PPLT) and Physical Palladium Shares (PALL) shouldn’t be that surprising. Through their first six days of trading, average volumes for PPLT and PALL were about [...]
After weeks of anticipation, the first ETFs offering U.S. investors exposure to Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) launched on Friday, as London-based ETF Securities (ETFS) introduced the ETFS Physical Platinum Shares (PPLT) and ETFS Physical Palladium Shares (PALL). These funds bring the total number of U.S.-listed ETFs from ETFS to four, joining gold and silver ETFs [...]
As the ETF industry has continued its rapid expansion, there has been much debate surrounding the sustainability of the current growth and the potential saturation of the market. The first ETFs were relatively simple products, offering exposure to the world’s most widely-followed equity benchmarks. But the last ten years have seen hundreds of new ETFs [...]
Platinum and palladium prices jumped to recent highs last week on news that regulators had taken an important step towards allowing London-based ETF Securities (ETFS) to list physically-backed ETFs linked to the metals to trade on U.S. exchanges. “The Securities and Exchange Commission in the past week approved proposed rule changes from the New York [...]
The reasons for the rise of the ETF industry are numerous: intraday liquidity, (potentially) superior tax efficiency, and enhanced transparency relative to traditional actively-managed mutual funds have all contributed to the billions of dollars of inflows that these funds have seen in recent years. But the real attraction for most ETF investors is the reduced [...]
Last week, Deutsche Bank announced that it will increase the fees of seven PowerShares exchange-traded funds, citing “increased costs of managing the Funds due to changing regulatory requirements.” The changes will be effective beginning January 4, and will affect five commodity funds and two currency products.
The National Stock Exchange has released the latest facts and figures on the ETF industry for the month of November, and the results continue to impress. Total ETF assets increased to $752 million, an increase of more than 6% over October results. Strong performances from equity markets played a major rise in the asset uptick, [...]
Continued declines in the confidence of the U.S. dollar have led many national banks to seek out ways to reduce their exposure to the greenback. Many have opted to shift reserve holdings into hard currency, sending precious metals prices skyrocketing in recent sessions. Gold has gotten the lion’s share of the attention, as its penetration [...]
It’s been an interesting week in the world of ETFs: major indexes finished the week on a down note after trending upwards earlier in the week while gold finished around $1140/oz. Here are the ETF Database staff picks of the week’s most important and interesting stories from around the Web:
While the differences between traditional actively-managed mutual funds and exchange-traded products include several somewhat complex distinguishing characteristics, most investors focus on the relatively simple issue of expenses when making comparisons. Due to their passive nature, ETFs generally offer much lower expenses than mutual funds that can employ teams of analysts and conduct thorough research in [...]
