Posts tagged as:

IFEU

The first half of 2011 is officially in the books, and many investors find their portfolios in approximately the same place as they were to start the year (though a furious rally in the final week of the quarter gave a nice boost at an opportune moment). Most major equity indexes are up slightly on the year, while fixed income benchmarks have similarly hovered around breakeven. Beyond these broad generalizations, there are some significant performance discrepancies among exchange-traded products that may seem to offer up similar risk/return profiles.

The following tables highlight the top performers from every ETFdb Category during the first six months of the year, shedding some light on the asset classes that have struggled and thrived so far in 2011–and reinforcing that the seemingly minor distinctions between ETPs can lead to big differences in performance [for monthly updates on the best performers, sign up for the free ETFdb newsletter]: [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

With many equity markets plunging around the globe, investors are flocking towards safe-haven investments. This flight to quality has left many investors piling into U.S. Treasury bonds and the U.S. dollar in general. This has helped to sink commodity prices and send T-Bill yields lower decreasing the desirability of each substantially as asset classes to stash cash in. This leaves one type of investment that most investors would not consider given recent market events; real estate. [click to continue…]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Historically, no portfolio was complete without a material allocation to real estate. Consistently high real returns and low correlations to stocks and bonds made it easy to overlook the out-of-whack fundamentals that ultimately led to an unprecedented collapse. But when real estate markets got a reality check in late 2008, many investors swore off the [...]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

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 [...]

{ Comments on this entry are closed }