BABS: Build America Bond ETF From SPDR
American investors now have yet another way to loan their money to the government. This time the conduit is SPDR Nuveen Barclays Capital Build America Bond ETF (BABS), which began trading Thursday (5/13/2010). BABS will be the second ETF to focus on this niche of the fixed-income market. The other...
Vanguard Enters ETF Free Trading War
First Schwab, then Fidelity, now Vanguard is offering no-transaction-fee trading of its proprietary ETF products through its brokerage unit. The march toward free – or practically free – ETF trading is continuing with barely a pause. In a new commission schedule announced May 4, Vanguard...
UBR, UMX, UPV, UXJ: ProShares Leverages The World
Four new ETFS from ProShares hit the tape today, offering +200% daily leveraged exposure to four MSCI indexes covering Brazil, Mexico, Pacific ex-Japan, and Europe. All these benchmarks, or similar ones, are already accessible in unleveraged fashion through other ETFs. ProShares obviously thinks...
DailyFinance on Derivative ETFs
AOL Daily Finance has a good story about the ongoing regulatory drama involving leveraged, inverse and other derivative-based ETFs. Writer Sheryl Nance-Nash goes into more depth about this complex subject than any other mainstream media report I’ve seen. As we reported last month, the Securities...
KRU, KRS: New ProShares Cover Regional Banks
ProShares broke some new ground yesterday (4/22/10) with the first leveraged and inverse ETFs to cover the regional banking sub-sector. This group has been active recently, thanks in part to speculation that its members will become takeover targets for the multinational mega-banks, but would probably...
SKOR: Small-Cap Korean Stocks Get Their First ETF
Following on last month’s launch of ETFs covering Australian and Canadian small-caps, IndexIQ yesterday (4/14/10) marked more territory with the introduction of IQ South Korea Small Cap ETF (SKOR). If Korea continues to grow, SKOR could prove to be a winner. Like the other IndexIQ single-country...
JCO: Investing In The Contrary
Those who like fishing for value may find JETS Contrarian Opportunities Index Fund (JCO) to be a useful tool. Launched today (4/9/2010) by the relatively new provider Javelin, JCO will attempt to track the Dow Jones U.S. Contrarian Opportunities Index, a rules-based portfolio of low-performing stocks...
BIB, BIS: New Biotech 2x ProShares
If the biotechnology sector is just not wild enough for you, today is your lucky day. ProShares is now offering two new ETFs covering this sector with 2x daily leverage, either long or short. The new funds that began trading on 4/8/10 are: ProShares Ultra Nasdaq Biotechnology (BIB) (overview) ProShares...
LATM: New Latin America Small Cap ETF
The pace of new ETF launches seems to be quickening. Today brought Market Vectors Latin America Small-Cap Index ETF (LATM), which combines two increasingly-popular niches: Emerging markets and small-cap stocks. Latin America is not new territory for ETFs, of course. iShares S&P Latin America...
REK, SBM, YXI: New Inverse ProShares
Today ProShares brought out three new inverse ETFs focused on the domestic Real Estate and Basic Materials sectors as well as one tracking large-cap China stocks. All these funds have a daily performance target of -100% of their respective indexes. ProShares remains the only provider of inverse equity...
