ETF Database » BIL

How To Find The Best Money Market ETF

Stoyan Bojinov — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 13:00:42 +0000

ETFs continue to gain popularity as these innovative financial instruments allow for easy access to virtually any asset class without having to sacrifice cost-efficiency or transparency, making them ideal tools for long-term investors and active traders alike. While the bulk of exchange-traded products have appeal as longer-term investments that can potentially appreciate by a significant amount, not all funds are created with lucrative capital gains in mind. Enter money market ETFs; this breed of funds has caught the attention of countless investors who are looking to preserve capital and, luckily, there are a number of options to choose from [see also How To Pick The Right ETF Every Time]. Price Drivers Interest Rates: This is perhaps the single most important price driver that affects the money market ETFs asset class. The prevailing benchmark interest rate set by the Federal Reserve impacts the yield generated by these funds; in a low-rate environment, money market [...]

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AdvisorShares Launches Long/Short Hedge Fund ETF (QEH)

Michael Johnston — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:00:27 +0000

AdvisorShares, one of the largest issuers of active ETFs, made another addition to its lineup this week with the debut of a fund that will seek to capture results of long/short hedge fund managers. The new QAM Equity Hedge ETF (QEH) will employ an active long/short strategy that will seek to outperform about half of the long/short equity hedge fund universe that makes up the HFRI Equity Hedge Index. That benchmark includes a number of long/short hedge funds who report their results monthly to HFRI; QEH will effectively attempt to match the performance of that universe, which would result in outperforming about half of the component managers. It should be noted that the universe of component hedge funds doesn’t necessarily include only market neutral strategies; many hedge funds who report results to HFRI are net long–and often more than 50% net long. QEH will seek to deliver better risk adjusted [...]

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Saving For College, ETF Style: An ETF-Friendly 529 Plan

Michael Johnston — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:00:43 +0000

The ETF industry has been routinely praised for its innovation over the last several years, which is no doubt a contributing factor to the surge in interest and assets. Generally, reference to such innovation relates to the growth in the product lineup, as issuers of all sizes have launched a number of creative, first-to-market products over the past few years that have dramatically opened up the asset classes and investment strategies available through the exchange-traded structures [see also Free Report: How To Pick The Right ETF Every Time]. But there are other aspects of the industry that deserve credit for exciting new developments as well. While ETFs are still hard to find in most 401(k) account and other retirement plans, they are now readily accessible in a popular college savings account; a program from State Street allows new parents to use ETFs in a college savings plan for children, through an [...]

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ETFs For The Capital Preservationist

Michael Johnston — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:00:36 +0000

When the Federal Reserve announced recently that it plans to keep key interest rates at nearly zero until 2014, it hardly came as a surprise. With the economic recovery still in a very fragile state and inflationary pressures remaining tame, record low interest rates are expected to hang around for quite a while. While stock markets largely cheered the latest announcement, you could almost hear the exasperation of those who rely on generating meaningful current returns from their portfolios. The extension of the low rate environment means extending the challenges for yield hungry investors, such as those who rely on their portfolio to generate cash flows to cover living expenses [see also Six Juicy High Yield Bond ETFs For 2012]. Against this backdrop, more and more advisors have engaged actively in searching out securities that offer meaningful current returns for their clients. Not surprisingly, that objective generally leads to the [...]

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September ETF Data: Back Below $1 Trillion

Michael Johnston — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:00:23 +0000

September was a brutal month for equity markets around the globe, as anxiety over Europe and intensifying concerns about the growth prospects for many emerging markets hammered asset prices. The freefall in stock markets hit the bottom line of the ETF industry as well; despite another month of strong inflows, industry assets fell below the $1 trillion mark for the first time in several months. According to recent data from the National Stock Exchange, ETP assets finished the third quarter at about $973 billion, a decline of about 9% over the previous month. That slide came despite aggregate inflows into exchange-traded products of about $4.6 billion.Year-to-date inflows into ETFs totaled almost $79 billion through the first nine months, slightly ahead of the 2010 pace. Not surprisingly, interest in bond ETFs surged in September; this asset class saw about $5.7 billion in inflows. While cash flowed out of domestic equity ETFs [...]

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August ETF Stats: Keeping The Winning Streak Alive (Just Barely)

Michael Johnston — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:00:20 +0000

Total ETF assets declined by almost 4% in August thanks to abysmal performances from equity markets around the globe. But the industry kept its monthly winning streak alive, managing to generate net inflows of about $2 billion during one of the worst months performance wise since late 2008. Not surprisingly, fixed income ETFs saw a surge in interest; inflows to bond products during the month topped $4.7 billion according to the latest statistics from the National Stock Exchange. And while investors fled from international stock markets (to the tune of net outflows of about $5.6 billion), U.S. equity ETFs actually saw net inflows. One interesting figure was the size of net inflows into long leveraged U.S. equity funds; this corner of the market took in more than $3 billion in new cash. The ETF industry has enjoyed three consecutive months of net inflows; May saw about $1 billion in net [...]

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Bond ETFs That Steer Clear Of Interest Rate Risk

Michael Johnston — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:00:12 +0000

Innovation in the bond ETF space in recent years has been truly impressive, resulting in the introduction of a number of products that allow investors to fine tune their fixed income exposure. While the most popular bond ETFs are those that offer broad-based exposure to a variety of issuers and maturities (such as AGG or BND), there are dozens of more targeted products that allow investors to focus in on specific risk factors while avoiding others altogether [see AGG Realtime Rating]. In the world of bond investing, the primary risk factors relate to the creditworthiness of the issuer and the duration of the fund. The concept of credit risk is fairly straightforward: the less likely an issuer is to repay its obligations, the higher yield investors will demand. While interest rates have little direct impact on the probability of default, they can have a significant impact on the demand (and [...]

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ETF Alternatives To The World’s Largest Mutual Funds

Michael Johnston — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:00:38 +0000

It may be premature to hit the print button for the death certificate of active management, but changes to the investing landscape over the last several years have forced a reassessment of the value proposition this strategy offers. Research suggesting that active managers fail to add value is, of course, nothing new. Over the last several decades, a number of academic studies have suggested that on the whole, active managers fail to consistently beat the market, and that the majority of mutual funds fail to beat their benchmark after costs are taken into consideration. This frustration with the costs of active management paved the way for the rise of indexing as an investment strategy, as many investors have preferred to own the market through a low cost vehicle rather than pay hefty fees to a manager to occasionally beat the market. ETFs have become tremendously popular among active traders implementing [...]

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ETF Ideas For Deflation Defense

Michael Johnston — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:57:37 +0000

First, the good news: all those fears about runaway inflation following from the massive injections of capital into financial markets appear to have been overblown. Now for the bad news: the alternative may be much worse. For months wary investors have been eagerly watching CPI reports, fearful of the release indicating that price increases are beginning to accelerate, presumably spiraling out of control in the not-so-distant future. But instead of racing towards the double digits, CPI figures have slipped closer and closer to negative territory. That has sparked fears of deflation, a rare but serious economic condition that has some of the world’s most prominent investors legitimately concerned. PIMCO chief Mohammed El-Erian recently told Bloomberg that the U.S. faces a 25% chance of deflation and a double-dip recession. “I do not think the deflation and double-dip is the baseline scenario, but I think it’s the risk scenario,” said El-Erian. Jan [...]

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TIP: Silver Bullet Or Steel Trap?

Michael Johnston — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:06:09 +0000

Earlier this month, InvestmentNews released a list of the ten ETFs financial advisors researched the most in 2009. The list, which was based on information provided by Morningstar, included several traditional inflation hedges, such as the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) and iShares COMEX Gold Trust (IAU), as well as the broad-based PowerShares DB Commodity Fund (DBC). And in the top spot was the Barclays TIPS Bond Fund (TIP), which invests in inflation-protected securities issued by the U.S. Treasury. TIP has seen its popularity surge over the last year, taking in nearly $9 billion in cash in 2009. This trend has continued in 2010; fund has already seen inflows of more than $1.5 billion through the first two months of the year. Clearly, investors are concerned about inflation. And clearly, many think they’ve found the solution in the form of inflation-protected bonds. But those investors who are counting on TIP to [...]

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ETF Database » BIL

How To Find The Best Money Market ETF

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AdvisorShares Launches Long/Short Hedge Fund ETF (QEH)

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Saving For College, ETF Style: An ETF-Friendly 529 Plan

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ETFs For The Capital Preservationist

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September ETF Data: Back Below $1 Trillion

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August ETF Stats: Keeping The Winning Streak Alive (Just Barely)

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Bond ETFs That Steer Clear Of Interest Rate Risk

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ETF Alternatives To The World’s Largest Mutual Funds

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ETF Ideas For Deflation Defense

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TIP: Silver Bullet Or Steel Trap?

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