ProShares CEO Scoffs at Esoteric Benchmarks, Placing ETFs in 401(k)s

As ProShares prepares to launch a series of international index exchange-traded funds, the company’s CEO, Michael Sapir, spoke with Investor’s Business Daily about the future of the industry, and surprisingly, scoffed at many of the recent trends in the ETF industry.

For one, while Sapir believes the ETF industry has the opportunity to continue to grow, he doesn’t believe that the new spate of ETFs based on newer, untested, quasi-active indexes is necessarily a good development. “The market’s going to decide whether there are too many ETFs out there,” he said.

Sapir also said he doesn’t believe that ETFs will “thrive in the 401(k) market” because that channel negates the ability to buy and sell the funds all day long.

As to what ProShares is going to concentrate on in the foreseeable future, Sapir said it will likely continue to roll out inverse ETFs and international funds concentrated on China, Japan, emerging markets and the EAFE (Europe, Australia and the Far East) region. In addition, he believes the industry will introduce more ETF funds-of-funds.

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