The month of May was a generally disappointing stretch for investors, as both international and domestic equity markets struggled to overcome obstacles new and old. Commodities, which had been a nice source of absolute returns for much of the last year, fell on hard times as well; precious metals went into a brief freefall, and most other natural resources saw price declines as well.
May demonstrated the importance of a meaningful allocation to fixed income within any long-term portfolio, as most bond ETFs turned in nice gains during the month. The following tables highlight the best performers from each ETFdb Category during the month of May [ETFdb Pro members can download spreadsheets showing performance and expense data for the entire ETF universe]. [click to continue…]
Last year was a good year for most asset classes, as investor portfolios continued to recover from the recent recession. The difference in performance between many comparable funds was significant, and many of the best performers of 2010 are relatively small funds that maintain considerably smaller asset bases than their more popular competitors. Below, we [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Allstate Corp., the largest publicly-traded insurer of homes and automobiles in the U.S., announced this week that it is making some major shifts in its investment portfolio that now exceeds $100 billion. The Northbrook, Illinois-based company announced that it is reducing its exposure to commercial real estate and municipal bonds in favor of corporate debt.
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 [...]
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece this morning seeking to shed some light on the true cost of ETF trading, speculating that many investors may be paying a lot more in expenses than they believe. While ETFs have become tremendously popular in part because of their low cost structure relative to traditional actively-managed mutual [...]
Direxion, the ETF issuer known for pioneering and popularizing 3x leveraged ETFs, has added two new funds: Daily Real Estate Bull 3x Shares (DRN) and Daily Real Estate Bear 3x Shares (DRV). Both new ETFs, which began trading last week, track the MSCI U.S. REIT Index, a broad-based benchmark that represents approximately 85% of the U.S. [...]
