Health Care ETFs Poised to Repeat Good 2011
The final numbers are in, and 2011 was officially a “flat” year for the S&P 500. Without dividends, the large-cap stock index was actually down a fraction. With dividends, it gained only 2.1 percent. Today we’ll look at some interesting patterns in last year’s sector action — which...
Six Reasons to Avoid Japan In 2012
One of the best ways to make money in ETFs is to not lose money. I know it sounds obvious, but I can assure you that many people don’t get this key point. So if I can help you do that, then I count it as a success. And today I’ll talk about an ETF category I think you should avoid in 2012:...
The Major Flaw of Dividend Income Plans
There is a raging debate regarding the best way to live off your portfolio. Young adults are told, by those older and wiser, to save and invest for retirement. There is never a shortage of ideas and suggestions on how to build a nest egg. For those lucky enough to have accumulated a nest egg large...
TDX/db-X, WisdomTree, and VelocityShares Changes
Sponsors of ETPs have been very busy lately making changes to their existing line-ups. Deutsche Bank renamed the five TDX target date ETFs last Friday (6/17/11), WisdomTree made various name, ticker, and index changes to seven of its ETFs yesterday (6/20/11), and two VelocityShares ETNs will undergo...
Ticker Changes for Direxion and PowerShares ETFs
Direxion changed the ticker symbols for its pair of China 3x ETFs effective June 15. As mentioned in my recent ETF Stats report, Invesco PowerShares changed the name, ticker, underlying index, and expense ratio for seven of its style-box ETFs effective June 16, 2011. The revised PowerShares ETFs...
New Guggenheim Funds Are Not New
Despite what you may have read, Guggenheim did not launch any new ETFs last week. You can safely ignore the headline in the Guggenheim press release. What really happened is buried deep within that press releasewhose headline is totally wrong: as of June 1, 2011, some already-existing ETFs received...
Fun with Dick (AGQ) and Jane (ZSL) and Spot (SLV)
Seventeen years ago we saw the first leveraged mutual fund with daily reset. Now we have dozens of them along with ETFs that work the same way. Yet after all this time, many investors still don’t understand what leveraged funds can and cannot do. Even professional investors ignorantly called...
Egyptian Market Reopens – EGPT NAV Plunges
After many delays, the Egyptian Stock Exchange reopened yesterday. A 10% drop within minutes of the opening triggered circuit breakers and suspended trading for the day. During the nearly two-month closure, many investors mistakenly assumed the Market Vectors Egypt ETF (EGPT) was a good proxy for the...
QQQQ Becomes QQQ Again
PowerShares is changing the ticker symbols for 10 of its ETFs starting with tomorrow’s (3/23/2011) opening of trading. Included in the changes are the PowerShares QQQ Trust along with the nine small cap sector ETFs that were the subject of a lawsuit filed by the Select Sector SPDR Trust. I never...
ETF FONE Home
First Trust today (2/18/11) introduced a new ETF targeting the rapidly growing global smartphone industry. First Trust NASDAQ CEA Smartphone Index Fund (FONE) includes stocks of companies primarily involved in design, fabrication, and distribution of handsets, along with hardware, software, and mobile...
