ETF Database » DZK

ETF Tax Efficiency Report Card

Michael Johnston — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 15:00:04 +0000

When rattling off the advantages that ETFs hold compared to traditional actively-managed mutual funds, most investors usually start with the issue of expenses. The easiest comparison to make involves expense ratios, the fees charged by ETF and mutual fund companies for investing in a product. Though some mutual funds offer single-digit expense ratios, most actively managed products charge in excess of 1% (the average for the mutual fund industry is in the neighborhood of 1.4%). By comparison, the average expense ratio for ETFs is less than 0.60%, and there are more than a dozen funds that charge less than 10 basis points. But the potential cost efficiencies of ETFs relative to actively-managed mutual funds go beyond simple expense ratios. ETFs also have the potential to be more tax efficient, thanks to the unique “in-kind” rules of the creation/redemption process. Whereas mutual fund investors may incur capital gains as a result [...]

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ProShares Plans 300% Leveraged ETFs

Michael Johnston — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:13:24 +0000

ProShares, the issuer responsible for pioneering leveraged and inverse ETFs, has filed prospectuses for 16 new funds. Expansion is nothing new for ProShares–the company has launched a handful of new ETFs over the last year–but the filing was interesting because it detailed plans for 300% leveraged ETFs. ProShares’ current product line, which consists of more than 90 funds, includes only two ETFs with 300% leverage, the UltraPro S&P 500 (UPRO) and UltraPro Short S&P 500 (SPXU). Historically, ProShares has focused on inverse, 200% leveraged and 200% inverse leveraged ETFs, although the issuer expanded its offerings outside this area last year when in introduced the first 130/30 ETF. Several of the proposed funds, which are based on domestic and international equities and fixed income ETFs, would compete directly with existing products from Direxion. ProShares’ Proposed 3x Leveraged ETFs Style 300% ETF -300% ETF NASDAQ UltraPro QQQ UltraPro Short QQQ DJIA UltraPro [...]

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September Performance Debunks Leveraged ETF Myth

Michael Johnston — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:00:48 +0000

Over the last year, leveraged ETFs have been the subject of intense scrutiny from a number of parties, including regulatory agencies, state governments, broker-dealers, individual investors, and even class action lawyers. While several aspects of leveraged ETFs have been thoroughly analyzed and debated, perhaps no issue has drawn more attention than the effects of compounding returns when held for multiple trading sessions. Because most leveraged ETFs seek to provide amplified returns on a daily basis, they reset their exposure to the underlying benchmark on daily. As a result, the performance of leveraged ETFs over multiple trading sessions depends not only on the movement in the reference benchmark, but on the direction of the markets during that time period. In seesawing markets, returns can vary significantly in magnitude and even direction of changes in the fund’s reference index (see our Free Guide to Leveraged ETFs for a more thorough discussion). Unprecedented [...]

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Responding To Calls For ETF Regulation

Michael Johnston — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:30:35 +0000

In the week during which the Obama administration will unveil details surrounding its plan to revamp the regulation of the U.S. financial sector, calls for increased oversight of the ETF industry are picking up steam as well. Scott Burns, director of ETF Analysis at Morningstar, recently laid out a case for increased regulatory requirements for ETFs that use derivatives to achieve their objectives. But I’m not quite convinced that more regulation is the answer. In The Beginning… The first ETFs were equivalent to “plain vanilla” financial instruments, tracking well-known equity and fixed income indexes by duplicating their underlying holdings. Even today, the simplest ETFs remain among the most popular – the indexes tracked by the largest ETFs by market capitalization should be familiar to almost all investors. But as the ETF structure became more familiar and investors became more educated on the advantages of ETFs relative to traditional mutual funds, the [...]

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ETF Database » DZK

ETF Tax Efficiency Report Card

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ProShares Plans 300% Leveraged ETFs

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