Stock markets retreated last week as sparse economic data releases paved the way for profit taking. This week will see a host of important fundamental news on the home front as investors digest durable goods orders, GDP, and consumer spending data. Markets are off to a hot start as Ben Bernanke’s speech on Monday morning lifted hopes for an additional round of stimulus, however expectations for further quantitative easing are still purely speculation at this point. The bull-train is gearing up again, although investors will need some fundamental evidence for the rally to be sustained.
Stocks drifted sideways on Thursday as investors were glad to see a better-than-expected jobless claims report, but held off from jumping into the market ahead of today’s pivotal unemployment data. Confidence in the recovery improved as Ben Bernanke testified before Congers, while the latest jobless claims report showed that 367,000 people filed for unemployment, versus [...]
This past year was the most active ever for the exchange traded industry in terms of product development; the launch of more than 300 new products shattered the record set in 2010. And innovation continues to run high in the industry; the creativity of issuers is still impressive, as many of the ETFs that have [...]
Direxion, one of the largest issuers of leveraged and inverse ETFs, announced the launch today of a pair of non-leveraged funds that will utilize insider sentiment indicators to achieve exposure to domestic equities. The new ETFs will seek to replicate indexes that filter the universe of U.S. equities using quant-based strategies to eliminate stocks with [...]
With 2011 just around the corner, tis the season for pledges to better everything from health to wealth to happiness in the coming year. Below, we offer up ten New Years’ Resolutions for ETF investors looking to cut expenses, round out their portfolios, and maximize returns in 2011 [for more ETF insights, sign up for [...]
As ETFs have burst on to the scene in recent years and worked their way into the investing mainstream, the number of products available and complexity of exposure offered has increased significantly. Advisors and investors have taken steps to educate themselves on the ins and outs of ETFs, but many are still scrambling to play [...]
After recently rolling out a suite of ETFs linked to popular S&P indexes, Vanguard continued its push to grab a larger share of the ETF market on Wednesday by introducing seven new products linked to Russell benchmarks. The new Vanguard ETFs include:
As the ETF industry has expanded at a breakneck pace in recent years, keeping track of all the products out there has become no easy task. There are now well more than 1,000 exchange-traded products included in the ETF Screener, and many of those have hit the market in the last two to three years.
ETFs have burst onto the investing scene in part because they allow for a tremendous simplification of the portfolio construction process. Even relatively novice investors are able to construct a well-diversified, balanced portfolio with just a handful of tickers, eliminating a slew of unnecessary expenses in the process.
Although ETFs offer many potential advantages over traditional actively-managed mutual funds, the most commonly-cited benefit is perhaps the easiest to grasp: lower expenses. In order to cover their costs–teams of analysts and pricey analytical tools used in pursuit of alpha–mutual funds typically always charge expense ratios in excess of 1% (and many times north of [...]
Claymore, the Chicagoland issuer known for its line of themed ETFs and targeted sector funds, has launched three new ETFs based on broad market indexes maintained by Wilshire. The new funds include the Wilshire 5000 Total Market ETF (WFVK), Wilshire 45oo Completion Index ETF (WXSP), and Wilshire U.S. REIT ETF (WREI).
