Whenever a company prepares for a public offering, executives have been known to spend an inordinate amount of time choosing the combination of letters that will serve as the company’s ticker and often nickname within the investment community. To many, the fixation on selecting the perfect ticker seems like an irrational obsession on par with Patrick Bateman’s affinity for business cards. But there’s some evidence to support the idea that picking a clever ticker can be worth quite a bit of money. [click to continue…]
Last year saw the continuation of the ETF industry’s impressive rise, with more than 100 new products hitting the market and a handful of new issuers entering into the arena. While many of the new exchange-traded products are “plain vanilla” funds that will compete directly with existing products, we also saw a number of truly [...]
As the ETF industry has continued its rapid expansion, there has been much debate surrounding the sustainability of the current growth and the potential saturation of the market. The first ETFs were relatively simple products, offering exposure to the world’s most widely-followed equity benchmarks. But the last ten years have seen hundreds of new ETFs [...]
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 [...]
The ETF industry picked up steam in November, with several highly-anticipated funds coming to market and multiple issuers disclosing new details on innovative products that could be launched in 2010. The biggest news for the month was the entrance of Charles Schwab into the industry with the launch of four ETFs in early November. Debuting [...]
PIMCO, the Newport Beach, California-based bond fund giant, launched its latest exchange-traded fund on Wednesday, the Intermediate Municipal Bond Strategy Fund. The new ETF, which comes with an expense ratio of 35 basis points, will trade under the ticker MUNI, which was somehow still available. The ETF will be managed by John Cummings, the company’s [...]
Pimco, the Newport Beach, California-based bond fund giant, is quickly expanding its presence in the ETF arena. Three months ago, Pimco was watching from the sidelines as iShares continued to show its dominance in the fixed income ETF space. With the launch of three additional ETFs this month, Pimco’s product line now consists of five [...]
Pimco, which made major waves when it launched its first exchange-traded fund in June, has introduced its second fund, the Pimco 1-5 Year U.S. TIPS Index Fund (STPZ). When Pimco filed to launch its 1-3 Year U.S. Treasury Fund (TUZ), it also filed for approval on six additional indexed ETFs, including:
In perhaps a sign of things to come in the ETF industry, Vanguard has filed a registration statement with the SEC for seven new bond index funds, more than doubling the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania-based firm’s existing bond lineup. According to Index Universe, the proposed ETFs are:
Although ETFs and mutual funds seem in many ways to be natural rivals, one of the most closely-watched trends in the “active vs. passive” debate has been the development of a hybrid type of investment option: actively-managed ETFs. While the space has mostly taken “baby steps” to this point, it appears to be poised for [...]
The National Stock Exchange has released its monthly statistical bulletin for June, and the ETF industry certainly seems to have avoided any sort of “June swoon.” Although the trends for the industry as a whole are overwhelmingly positive, a trio of fund sponsors enjoyed particularly successful months. A few of the highlights from the report:
