Today is the last day of trading for the two exchange-traded products from MacroShares, following an announcement from the company that the MacroShares Major Metro Housing Up Trust (UMM) and MacroShares Major Metro Housing Down Trust (DMM) had reached an early termination trigger by failing to accumulate at least $50 million in assets. The registration statements for the products provide for a maturity date of November 25 2014, but allow early termination when “the amount of cash and treasuries on deposit in the Up Trust and/or Down Trust is less than fifty (50) million dollars per trust on any business day and we elect, in our discretion, to terminate the paired trusts.” Recently, UMM and DMM had aggregate assets of about $20 million. [click to continue…]
Over the past 18 months, housing prices have retreated sharply from the highs reached at the end of the housing boom. However, there are reasons to believe that one of the longest and most severe housing slumps ever is nearing an end. Building permits recently increased to a 584,000 yearly pace, well above the forecasted [...]
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 [...]
When MacroShares launched its most recent paired fund offerings earlier this year, it did so in a very interesting housing environment. Home prices in many of the country’s largest markets, including Florida, California, and Arizona, had seen sharp declines over the last year, and it seemed that there was no end in sight. In the [...]
Over the past several years, exchange-traded funds have enjoyed a tremendous surge in popularity, passing many major milestones as they were embraced by retail and institutional investors alike. Once comprised solely of “plain vanilla” products tracking well-known equity indexes, the ETF industry has evolved at an incredible pace in recent years, and now offers investors [...]
It’s been a little more than a month since MacroShares jumped back into the ETF game with the introduction of the Major Metro Housing Up (UMM) and Major Metro Housing Down (DMM) exchange-traded products. Shortly before launching the Up/Down housing funds, MacroShares had pulled the plug on similar paired funds offering exposure to crude oil [...]
The swelling controversy over the risks associated with leveraged ETFs has apparently caused its first casualty. St. Louis-based Edward Jones & Co., the prominent financial services firm, decided during a regular review of its products in June to stop selling leveraged funds, citing the fact that they are “one of the most misunderstood and potentially dangerous [...]
Direxion, the ETF issuer known for pioneering and popularizing 3x leveraged ETFs, has added two new funds: Daily Real Estate Bull 3x Shares (DRN) and Daily Real Estate Bear 3x Shares (DRV). Both new ETFs, which began trading last week, track the MSCI U.S. REIT Index, a broad-based benchmark that represents approximately 85% of the U.S. [...]
A week after folding the second incarnation of its unique up/down crude oil funds due to the failure to attract sufficient investments, MacroShares burst back on to the scene with the launch of two new exchange-traded products (they’re not technically ETFs). The MacroShares Major Metro Housing Up (UMM) and Major Metro Housing Down (DMM) began trading [...]
Thursday marked the last day of trading for MacroShares $100 Oil Up (UOY) and $100 Oil Down (DOY), two securities that drew a lot of attention from the ETF community (even though they’re not technically ETFs), but were slow to catch on with investors. The development comes as no surprise, as MacroShares reported back in [...]
