Geary Advisors, the firm that last year pioneered state-specific ETFs, has announced that it will close down the Oklahoma Exchange-Traded Fund (OOK) and Texas Exchange-Traded Fund (TXF) by the end of the month. Both funds launched in late 2009, but despite impressive performances struggled to build up assets and trading volumes. OOK seeks to replicate the SPADE Oklahoma Index, a benchmark consisting of publicly-traded companies whose corporate headquarters are located in Oklahoma or who maintain significant operations within Oklahoma. Though OOK’s assets are spread across a number of sectors, the fund maintains a heavy tilt towards firms engaged in the transport of natural gas. That made it an intriguing option for playing that corner of the energy market, but assets were slow to accumulate [see How To Survive An ETF Liquidation]. [click to continue…]
Charles Schwab may be a relative newcomer to the exchange-traded fund game, but the San Francisco-based firm has made quite a splash since wading into the ETF waters late last year. On Monday, Schwab shook up the industry again, announcing that it was reducing the expense ratios on six ETFs, or three quarters of its [...]
From a certain perspective, the ETF space shows the signs not of a still-nascent industry, but of a mature corner of the investing world. For the better part of a decade, the industry totem pole has remained unchanged, with four big firms accounting for nearly 90% of all ETF assets. But a closer look reveals [...]
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 [...]
Keith Geary is the chairman, president, and CEO of The Geary Companies, an Oklahoma-based financial services firm. Geary Advisors recently launched the Texas Large Companies Exchange-Traded Fund (TXF) and Oklahoma ETF (OOK), the first state-specific equity ETFs available to U.S. investors. He recently took time out of his busy schedule to talk about his firm’s [...]
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 [...]
The ETF industry picked up steam in November, with several highly-anticipated funds coming to market and multiple issuers disclosing new details on innovative products that could be launched in 2010. The biggest news for the month was the entrance of Charles Schwab into the industry with the launch of four ETFs in early November. Debuting [...]
Oklahoma City-based Geary Advisors, LLC announced today that they are in the process of reducing the fund fees for their two state-specific ETFs, including the TXF Large Companies Exchange-Traded Fund (TXF) and the Oklahoma Exchange-Traded Fund (OOK). When these ETFs were initially launched (OOK in late October and TXF in early November), both charged fees [...]
OOK Advisors announced the launch of its second exchange-traded fund on Wednesday as the TXF Large Companies Exchange-Traded Fund (TXF) began trading on the NYSE Arca Exchange. The new fund will track the SPADE Texas Index, a benchmark designed to measure the performance of the largest companies headquartered in the state. The index is up [...]
