The PowerShares FTSE RAFI U.S. 1000 Portfolio (PRF) recently passed its five year milestone, a period during which the fundamentally-weighted product outperformed many more popular market-cap weighted ETFs. PRF debuted in December 2005, and for the five year period ended December 31, 2010 it achieved a cumulative total return of 23.1% (based on NAV). That compared quite favorably to the more widely replicated Russell 1000 Index, which added about 12% during the same period. [click to continue…]
In recent years, investors have begun moving away from traditional active management in favor of more cost-efficient indexing strategies. The result has been a tremendous surge in the popularity of ETFs and a serious threat to actively-managed mutual funds that have dominated the investment industry for decades. As market indexes have transitioned from performance benchmarks [...]
The tremendous increase in the number of ETFs launched in recent years has seemingly brought cheap, efficient access to nearly every corner of the globe within reach of U.S. investors. There are now funds devoted to Vietnam, Turkey, Israel, Colombia, among countless others. But while the breadth of international options has expanded significantly, the exposure [...]
After decades of flying high and shrugging off crises around the world, U.S. equity markets have fallen on some tough times. The epicenter of the mortgage crisis that evolved into a global recession has scared away many investors away from the U.S. markets, afraid that the worst is yet to come and that the “glory days” [...]
