With over 1,400 exchange-traded products on the market, investors have likely run into some seemingly “duplicate” offerings. While many of the “plain vanilla” products have quite a bit in common, there are more than a handful of funds which offer seemingly identical exposure, although a closer look under the hood reveals some noteworthy surprises [see 25 Things Every Financial Advisor Should Know About ETFs]. The old saying “never judge a book by its cover” can certainly help investors when it comes time to doing the proper research necessary for selecting a fund that best suits their objectives and risk tolerance.
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With the finish line in sight, it’s fairly safe to say that 2011 will be remembered by most investors as a wild, back-and-forth year that brought plenty of both hope and despair. A hot start raised optimism of a continued recovery after a generally impressive 2011, but the summer months were anything but relaxing; major [...]
UBS, the issuer behind one of the broadest lineups of ETNs available to U.S. investors, continued the aggressive expansion of its product lineup this week with the introduction of two unique offerings. The company rolled out a pair of blunt instruments designed to be used in high level “risk on / risk off” trades, a [...]
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 [...]
Ongoing worries of a global economic slowdown coupled with Euro zone debt woes have prompted many investors to reallocate capital to safer corners of the market in recent months. U.S. large cap stocks have been a popular destination, largely considered a “safe haven” amongst equity investors, as this asset class has staged an impressive comeback [...]
The saying “never judge a book by its cover” is certainly applicable to a wide range of situations. That includes the business of investing; for advisors and individuals who use ETFs, the old adage can be very relevant, valuable advice. There are now more than 1,300 exchange-traded products now available to U.S. investors, and that [...]
The last five years have seen a tremendous expansion of the ETF industry, as assets have skyrocketed and the number of products available to U.S.-based investors has multiplied. That same period of time has also been a period of tremendous volatility in global financial markets; the last five years have witnessed an unprecedented financial crisis, [...]
Today was another volatile session as markets opened down and were never able to fully recover, despite a nice uptick towards the end of the day. All in all, it was a pretty rough week as the first two days set a negative tone for the coming month despite Wednesday’s and Thursday’s gains. The Dow [...]
Euphoria swept over Wall Street yesterday as good news from the Euro zone pushed stock markets higher. Prime Minister George Papandreou assured investors that his nation would remain in the currency bloc after he announced that Greece would not hold a referendum to the “bailout plan” proposed earlier last week in Brussels. A surprise interest [...]
ETF assets rode a surge in stock markets higher in October, as total AUM for U.S.-listed exchange-traded products climbed higher by more than 11% last month. According to the latest figures from the National Stock Exchange, ETP assets stood at $1.08 trillion at the end of October, with monthly inflows of nearly $24 billion for [...]
The rapid expansion of the ETF industry has been one of the most important developments of the last several decades to financial professionals; as the lineup of exchange-traded products has surged past 1,300, financial advisors now have more tools in their toolkits than ever before to help construct client portfolios. With these new financial products [...]
