With a weak consumer economy and a lack of job creation, concerns are once again beginning to return to the housing industry. For the 10 City Case-Shiller index, prices are down year-over-year in non seasonally adjusted terms for the most recent reading, leading to a dreaded double dip for many markets around the country. However, this doesn’t give investors the full picture of the real estate market in the country, as a number of other corners of the space have help up rather well in comparison. Stocks in some corners of the retail space, as well as those in the storage and medical sectors, have managed to do rather well in these difficult times and have given investors both solid gains and nice dividend yields. [click to continue…]
IndexIQ, the issuer perhaps best known for its hedge fund replication ETFs, rolled out the latest addition to its growing suite of small cap lineup today: the IQ U.S. Real Estate Small Cap ETF (ROOF). The new product will be the first to offer exposure exclusively to small cap U.S. REITs, seeking to replicate the [...]
Celebrating the one year anniversary of their partnership on a commission-free ETF platform, iShares and Fidelity announced the expansion of a program that allows free trading of certain iShares ETFs. The addition of the five ETFs brings the total number of iShares products that can be traded commission-free in Fidelity accounts from 25 to 30:
AdvisorShares continues to expand its footprint in the active ETF arena, announcing today the launch of the Cambria Global Tactical ETF (GTAA). The new fund comes out of a partnership with Cambria Investment Management, the firm run by Mebane Faber and Eric Richardson. Faber is perhaps best known for his 2007 paper A Quantitative Approach [...]
Despite bullish rhetoric from Washington and some indications of progress–the strength of the recent earnings season was a pleasant surprise–investors remain anxious in the current environment. With equity markets facing tremendous obstacles ahead, including elevated unemployment rates and an uncertain regulatory environment, safe havens have seen no shortage of interest [see Three ETFs To Protect [...]
For someone who played such a major role in the introduction and widespread adoption of ETFs, Vanguard Group founder John Bogle has some surprisingly negative perceptions of these products. Bogle’s beef isn’t with the exchange-traded structure (he’s referred to that as a “truly great business model” that helps investors avoid the “tyranny of compounded costs”), [...]
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 [...]
Investors returned from a long holiday weekend with a lot more than leftovers to digest. The crisis in Dubai continued to evolve, with uncertainty over the UAE’s ultimate involvement in Dubai the latest cause for concern. Meanwhile, India surprised investors by reporting GDP growth of nearly 8% for the year, likely setting the stage for [...]
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 [...]
Inching towards the Thanksgiving holiday, a more bullish outlook from Fed officials and another rise in home prices was more than offset by news that U.S. GDP growth had been revised lower. Most major benchmarks finished the day down slightly, led by a retreat in many Japanese indexes to four-month lows.
