Whenever a company prepares for a public offering, executives have been known to spend an inordinate amount of time choosing the combination of letters that will serve as the company’s ticker and often nickname within the investment community. To many, the fixation on selecting the perfect ticker seems like an irrational obsession on par with Patrick Bateman’s affinity for business cards. But there’s some evidence to support the idea that picking a clever ticker can be worth quite a bit of money. [click to continue…]
Historically, no portfolio was complete without a material allocation to real estate. Consistently high real returns and low correlations to stocks and bonds made it easy to overlook the out-of-whack fundamentals that ultimately led to an unprecedented collapse. But when real estate markets got a reality check in late 2008, many investors swore off the asset class for good. Or so they thought. [click to continue…]
Following a year that saw some of the worst performances in recent memory, many asset classes have bounced back in 2009. But some have performed better than others, and as the year draws to a close we take a look at some of the best-performing ETFs. The year’s top gainers include a few of the [...]
On Tuesday, Claymore Securities launched its China Technology ETF (CQQQ), the first U.S.-listed ETF to focus on the Chinese technology sector. CQQQ joins three other China ETFs from Claymore (YAO, HAO, TAO) that have accumulated more than $500 million in aggregate assets. The new ETF will seek to replicate the AlphaShares China Technology Index, a [...]
Once considered a vital “return enhancer” in almost every portfolio, real estate as an asset class has fallen out of favor with investors following its spectacular collapse during (and role in causing) the recent global economic downturn. Real estate was historically embraced because of its potential for delivering excess returns in bull property markets and [...]
It’s been an interesting week the world of ETFs: ETFs trended upwards at the beginning of the week but fell back in trading late Thursday and Friday. Here are the ETF Database staff picks of the week’s most important and interesting stories from around the Web:
AlphaShares, the creator of the indexes behind the Claymore/AlphaShares Small Cap Index ETF (HAO) and Claymore/AlphaShares China Real Estate ETF (TAO), has announced the creation of an All Cap China index. The new benchmark will track all firms over $500 million in market cap that trade on either the New York or Hong Kong stock [...]
Global X Funds, the New York-based ETF provider that was the first to offer funds focusing on Colombia and the Nordic region, has filed for approval with the SEC to launch six new ETFs that focus on various sectors of the Chinese economy. The proposed funds include:
Christian Magoon is the President and Senior Managing Director of Claymore Securities, Inc. He recently took time out of his busy schedule to talk with ETF Database.
Claymore certainly doesn’t seem to be resting on its laurels following last week’s announcement that Guggenheim Partners has agreed to buy the firm, including its line of about 35 ETFs with nearly $2 billion in assets. The Lisle, Illinois-based firm has filed with the SEC for approval of the Claymore/AlphaShares China All-Cap ETF. The proposed [...]
With a roller coaster six months behind us that saw no shortage of interesting twists and turns and unsuspected headlines, we’ve finally reached the midway point of 2009. Ahead of us is the highly anticipated “second half of 2009,” which for months we’ve heard will hold returns to growth, a recovering economy, and enough green [...]
As the first half of 2009 draws to a close, it seems that we’re finally starting to see things return to some semblance of normality. Equity markets have rallied sharply since bottoming out in March. Volatility is back within its historical range after hitting record highs over the past year. And politicians in Washington have [...]