With just over a month in the books for 2010, equity markets have already been taken on a wild ride. After an initial jump, concerns over a government-imposed slowdown in China weighed on global stocks, particularly emerging markets and commodity-intensive businesses. As we enter February, many equity ETFs find themselves in the red for the year, attempting to claw back to break-even.
But we profile a seven funds that are off to a hot start in 2009. Many of 2009’s best performers–such as emerging markets and technology ETFs–are clustered far down the list, while many of the laggards of 2009 have surged ahead. [click to continue…]
WisdomTree, the ETF issuer specializing in dividend and earnings weighted funds, announced a change to the Japan Total Dividend Fund (DXJ) beginning April 1. DXJ will still follow the same equities and maintain an expense ratio of 0.48% but will also seek to neutralize the affects of the volatile currency market and limit the impact of the fluctuations of the Japanese yen against the dollar. The fund will change its name to the WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity Fund. [click to continue…]
Value investing is one of the oldest and most popular equity strategies, mastered by legendary investors like Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham and embraced by countless professional money managers and individual investors. The rise of the ETF industry has presented investors in pursuit of superior dividend yields dozens of options, each offering a unique twist [...]
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 [...]
In the wake of the recent global recession, many investors have looked to Asia to lead the way to recovery. Emerging economies such as China and India have continued to expand at impressive pace, while Australia was recently one of the first developed markets to raise interest rates. But among these hot zones, Japan remains [...]
As the recovery has gained momentum in much of the Asian Pacific, Japan’s economy has struggled to find its footing, becoming a laggard in a region that has largely propelled itself out of the recession and established itself as one of the leaders of the new global economy. Australia has begun raising interest rates once [...]
