Last year saw more than 100 new product launches, ranging from plain vanilla equity and bond funds to ETFs offering exposure to exotic new investment strategies and asset classes previously available only to a limited slice of the investing community. The innovation that has made ETFs a popular alternative to mutual funds seems ready to continue through2010. Based on discussions with industry executives and others covering the industry, it seems like a safe bet that 2010 will shatter existing records for new ETF launches.
But there has also been some concern over saturation in the ETF industry, as well more than 100 funds currently have less than $10 million in assets. Hype around the launch of new products doesn’t always translate into sustained investor demand. While many investors and advisors are looking forward to some of the exciting products in the pipeline for 2010, we take a look back, checking in on ten of the most interesting ETFs launched in 2009 (we should note the the numbers don’t reflect a ranking of any sort). [click to continue…]
Chaos gripped Wall Street on Friday, as the likelihood that Ben Bernanke won’t be confirmed to a second term as Fed chairman surged and uncertainty swirled around the financial sector in the wake of Obama’s proposed regulations to curb risk. The technology sector also sunk following Google’s earnings report after the bell on Thursday. Despite the fact that the search engine giant posted a big jump in profits and beat analyst expectations, shares sunk as investors were apparently hoping for more. [click to continue…]
The pace of innovation in the ETF industry accelerated in 2009, as issuers introduced countless new spins on the exchange-traded structure that provide investors with more options and more flexibility than ever before. Sector-specific emerging markets and China funds, convertible bond ETFs, and state-specific funds were among the exciting new products to hit the market [...]
After the unprecedented volatility of 2008 and the dramatic rally of 2009, the market over the past month or so has been quite boring, with indexes trending mostly sideways as stocks look for direction. This has led to greater risk tolerance among investors and has dramatically decreased anticipated volatility for the market. The Chicago Board [...]
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 [...]
Wednesday was a wild day for U.S. and global equity markets, with huge losses for most major benchmarks that conjured up images of late 2008, when seemingly every day saw a triple digit swing in the Dow. The ETFdb 60 Index, a benchmark that measures the performance of the universe of investable assets available through [...]
Equity and oil prices fell on Monday as the dollar strengthened, suggesting that the greenback remains a safe haven investment in times of economic uncertainty. Investors continued to dance around two psychologically and technically important levels: the 10,000 mark for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the $1.50 mark for the dollar against the euro.
The [...]
Every investor has a few benchmarks that he or she watches closely to keep a pulse on the market. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average are perhaps the most widely-followed benchmarks in the U.S., recognized by just about everyone. The CBOE Volatility Index (better known as the VIX) doesn’t have nearly the level [...]
Friday was an action-packed day on Wall Street and around the world, with a disappointing GDP release in London, reports of a divided Federal Reserve, and a continued climb in commodity prices. The Dow fell more than 100 points to finish the week below the 10,000 mark, a level it has now crossed several times [...]
The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index, better known as the VIX, has been one of the most carefully-watched benchmarks since its inception in the early 1990s. In 2004, VIX futures gave investors a way to actually invest in the benchmark, as did VIX options in 2006 (both won the Most Innovative Product award at [...]
Don Dion, who covers ETFs for TheStreet.com and runs Dion Money Management, recently wrote a three part series highlighting the “10 Most Dangerous ETFs”. Dion notes that as the ETF industry continues to expand beyond “plain vanilla” funds, investors are introduced to products that can face significant liquidity issues, be subject to increased regulatory scrutiny, [...]
A recent article from the Wall Street Journal’s John Spence highlights the struggles facing exchange-traded notes, or ETNs, the smaller and less-known and cousins to the tremendously popular ETFs. Although similar to ETFs in many respects, ETNs have some key differences- mainly that they are debt instruments issued by banks, rather than a share in a portfolio [...]
