Do Exchange-Traded Funds Pose A Threat to Stability?
Exchange-Traded Funds Ozgur Emre Ergungor Cleveland Fed ETFs are one of the most successful financial innovations of the last few decades. As a new, rapidly growing, and increasingly complex financial instrument, ETFs might raise concerns about the risk they pose to financial stability. While they do not seem to pose a threat at this...
"Volatility is Not an Asset Class"
The WSJ had a blog post further detailing the peculiar odyssey of the Velocity Shares Daily 2x VIX Short Term ETN (TVIX). A lengthy part of the post was devoted to the thoughts of one portfolio manager who among other things said that volatility is an ...
BiO2 Medical Raises Series B
BiO2 Medical, a Texas-based medical device manufacturer with corporate offices in San Antonio, Texas, and R&D and manufacturing operations in Golden, Colorado, has completed a $13.7M Series B round of funding. The round included the conversion of a $1 million State of Texas Emerging Technology Fund (ETF) award. The round was led by San Antonio’s...
The Big Picture For The Week Of March 25. 2012
A few brief items this morning.First up is the meltdown of the Velocity Shares Daily 2x VIX Short Term ETN which is more commonly referred to by its symbol which is TVIX. This is a levered ETN that tracks the futures market for the VIX index. Futures o...
The Proper Context of Low Beta ETFs
IndexUniverse had a post that explored some of the nuances of the PowerShares Low Volatility ETF (SPLV) and the PowerShares High Beta ETF (SPHB). The article was a little muddled in that it seemed to start out by making the argument for why now might ...
A Diamond ETF On The Way?
Index Universe reported that IndexIQ has a physically backed diamond ETF in the works. Three years ago I had a light post asking why there was no diamond ETF. This idea intellectually appealing on some level. For men I think it might appeal the same wa...
Good News; They’re Profitable!
ETF Trends had a post covering the growth of new all ETF portfolio solutions being offered, based on the article, by large banks. The article excerpted a MarketWatch story that had a lot of quotes from someone at Wells Fargo about their product suite a...
Sector Bond Funds
There was a meaningful evolution in fixed income ETFs yesterday when iShares came out with three corporate bond ETFs that target sectors; Financials Sector Bond Fund (MONY), Utilities Sector Bond Fund (AMPS) and Industrials Sector Bond Fund (ENGN).Buyi...
We Own Apple
An important part of using narrow based ETFs, like sector, country or thematic, is knowing at least a little about any very large holdings in the ETF. I recently wrote about the new iShares Denmark (EDEN) which has about 20% in client holding Novo Nord...
Quick Tidbit
Global X launched the Permanent ETF (PERM) which is a pretty true version of the original Harry Browne concept. You can learn more about it through the above link, I should have a full writeup on the fund for theStreet.com in a few days.My wife found t...
The Big Picture for the Week of January 22, 2012
One of the first ETFs for Latin America is the iShares is the iShares S&P Latin America 40 Index Fund (ILF). I am pretty sure that iShares Brazil (EWZ) and iShares Mexico (EWW) predate ILF going back to the WEBS days (WEBS=world equity baskets).A f...
Sunday Morning Coffee
In the comments of yesterday's post a little discussion broke out about my definition of large accounts and mid sized accounts or more correctly the differences, as I see them, in portfolio construction based on account size.The relevance could be that...
