ETFs

Advisors don’t only have to bemoan the U.S. Postal Service’s decline — there are ways to profit from it. It’s worth at least considering an investment in ETFs that have exposure to companies like FedEx and UPS, according to an analysis by S&P Capital IQ.

AdvisorShares Investments, a sponsor of actively managed ETFs, announced that the AdvisorShares Accuvest Global Opportunities ETF will begin trading on Jan. 26.

State Street Corporation said its exchange-traded fund service, Total ETF, will use cloud-based technology to fully automate the development and management of a fund from basket creation through to trade processing and settlement.

Investors pulled $4 billion out of exchange-traded funds that invested in emerging markets last year, making them the least-popular form of ETFs in 2011.

Vanguard Chief Investment Officer Gus Sauter challenged the ETF industry to be responsible in developing new products and called for greater efforts to educate investors about ETFs.

You’ve heard of structured products. These largely were (and are) complex securities based on lots of streams of cash in underlying loans whose flows were not well predicted. Now come “synthetic” ETFs, where interest-rate swaps and other derivative products are used to replicate the performance of a securities index.

Exchange-traded funds are like stocks. Except they're not. They’re sort of like mutual funds, but not really. Here’s a glossary of ETF terms to help clear things up.

There’s logic in thinking that trading in funds that promise double or triple the movement of the market will exacerbate the swings that occur. But it would invert reality.

The number of listed exchange-traded funds grew 20.6% in 2011 and the number of listed exchange-traded notes grew 53.8%, according to U.S. figures developed by the Exchange-Traded Fund Association.

The world's largest asset management firm will be the first company to list securities on a BATS Global Markets electronic venue that now competes for listings on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market.

Growth in exchange-traded funds fell to 5.1% in 2011, from 27.5% in 2010 and 46.7% in 2009, according to figures released by the Exchange Traded Fund Association. The category with the biggest gains: fixed-income funds.

If you had the foresight to invest heavily for your clients in Pimco's 25-year zero coupon U.S. Treasury exchange-traded bond fund last year, they would have realized a 51.9% return on their investment. The fund was the best-performing exchange-traded fund in 2011.

Examining the wisdom of using exchange-traded funds to weather macroeconomic headwinds.

Knight Capital Group has launched two actively managed exchange-traded funds run by subsidiary Astor Asset Management. The funds are the Astor Active Income ETF Fund and the Astor SP Growth ETF Fund.

There are plenty of ETF choices out there for investors. Some might make more sense than others, according to S&P Capital IQ.

The funds might include both domestic and U.S.-listed foreign companies, a feature that allows for a more global representation.

Global X Funds is liquidating eight of its exchange-traded funds, including a fund focused on emerging markets and another on waste management.

Commodity and currency-based ETFs are gaining popularity as investors disappointed with poor returns on traditional investments like stocks and bonds look to diversify their holdings.

U.S. Bancorp has launched a new exchange-traded funds service, ETF-Fusion, which helps existing or start-up ETFs with product development, administration and trade support, proprietary technology and regulation and compliance.

For the first time since the end of April, investors pulled more money out of exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded notes than they put in, resulting in a net outflow of $238 million for the month, according to the National Stock Exchange.