iShares

According to Mark Wiedman, global head of iShares, “Fixed income markets are the next big frontier for the ETF industry.” Much like ETFs have transformed commodity markets such as gold, Wiedman expects ETFs will transform the fixed income markets. Assets are projected to double in fixed income markets over the next 5 years, from just under [...]

iShares has launched eight country-specific sovereign debt ETFs on the London Stock Exchange, the first ETFs of their kind. The treasury bond ETFs include the countries of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Finland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The ETFs will be invested in government issued debt. For original article, click here.

With the economy still showing concern in the U.S. and job rates still high, many investors are looking at equity investments outside the US. One of the easiest ways of investing internationally is with Exchange-Traded Funds or ETFs. Of the roughly 1,500 ETFs available to trade, there are 7 large ones that focus on international markets.

This week iShares launched a new emerging markets ETF, ticker EEMS,  which is intended to track the MSCI Emerging Markets Small Cap Index.  The top three countries represented in terms of holding are currenty Taiwan, Korea, and China. The top three country sector exposure weightings are currently consumer discretionary, industrials, and financials. For original article, [...]

Today there was great volatility in silver ETFs. The iShares Silver Trust, ticker SLV, traded over 44 million shares, and closed down -8.64% at 42.83, lower by over 4 points for the day. Proshares Ultra Silver 2x leveraged ETF ticker AGQ closed down -17.40%.  However Proshares UltraShort Silver 2x inverse ETF ticker ZSL closed +16.57% [...]

Rising oil prices have pushed up returns offered by energy based ETFs even as ETFs tracking crude oil prices have lagged behind. Prices are rising on account of political disturbance in Libya and East and North Africa and investors are preferring energy ETFs over oil based ETFs. Market forces prevent the latter from tracking the [...]

BlackRock’s iShares has now listed the Dow Jones Global Sustainability Screened fund and Europe Sustainability Screened fund on the LSE. Both the funds are backed by physical storage of products and are not based on value of the underlying index alone. Further, the two ETFs offer access to the sustainable sector to Europeans as well. [...]

Recent assertion by World Gold Council about sustaining high demand for gold-based ETFs was met with doubt and skepticism. SPDR Gold Trust GLD and iShares Gold Trust IAU can sustain performance in event of sovereign nations and central banks taking advantage of the all time high prices. This would cause institutional investors to rely on [...]

Bond investors are looking forward to the proposed government decision to sell more treasury bonds in the coming week. This has come as good news for those who have invested in long term bonds. Long term bonds are very sensitive to economic and political changes and there are signs of good performance by ETFs that [...]

The biotech industry is of interest to many ETF investors, yet it has been relatively flat in returns for the last 10 years and has underperformed when compared to other US equities. There are 5 plays in the ETF Biotech space: iShares Nasdaq Biotech ETF (IBB) is the biggest ETF in the market in terms [...]