Alternative investments

Thematic ETFs have proliferated as funds started in the last six months looking to trade on political agendas, such as tax reform and infrastructure spending.

Do they really deliver better risk-adjusted returns? A Morningstar panel said yes, but contributing writer Allan Roth disagrees.

As investors assess the winners and losers from the Trump administration's policies and digest mixed economic data, they aren't endorsing all shares.

The company is basing its pricing on the idea that not all buyers of its iShares products are the same, and the strategy seems to be working.

A key measure of the yield for the fund's underlying index plunged by nearly 3 percentage points on March 22.

The iShares unit has had other departures in recent years.

Millennials have placed 36% of their investable assets into ETFs, which is considerably higher than the 23% allocation on average by all other investors.

A single percentage point increase in ETF ownership has demonstrable effects on an individual stock, researchers said.

Most of the inflow came in the second half of the month after the Fed laid out an unexpectedly dovish rate-hike outlook, Russia's central bank said.

The firm's success bucks the long-held premise that investing in developing markets requires active managers responding to sudden shifts in political risk.