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Legg Mason appears ready to make its long anticipated move into the active ETF space. The Baltimore-based asset management firm filed for approval with the SEC that would allow it to introduce actively-managed ETFs to U.S. markets. Filing for exemptive relief is one of the first steps on the road to launching ETFs, and requires very little in the way of disclosure from would-be ETF issuers. Legg’s filing mentioned that potential ETF products could include domestic equities, global equities, and fixed income funds, but didn’t specify beyond that or indicate which products may be first up. [click to continue…]

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ETF Hall Of Shame: Nine Exchange-Traded Debacles

by Michael Johnston on August 13, 2009

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 exposure to nearly every corner of the investable market. Along the way, we’ve seen brilliant innovations (such as leveraged ETFs, “intelligent” ETFs, and actively-managed ETFs, just to name a few) and a plethora of new fund launches (at last count, there were 850 ETFs in the ETFdb Database). But it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows along the way. There have been a number of missteps along the way as issuers aggressively launched and promoted funds for which the market had no appetite. [click to continue…]

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Actively-Managed ETFs: A Gamechanger?

by Michael Johnston on May 5, 2009

Had Jerry Seinfeld pursued a career in finance, I imagine he’d be having a field day around the water cooler with the launch of the Grail American Beacon Large Cap Value ETF (GVT) yesterday:  “What’s the deal with actively managed ETFs…isn’t the whole point of an ETF that is isn’t actively managed?” Since one of [...]

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