Index changes on five PowerShares ETFs took effect today, as the Wheaton, Ill.-based fund company focuses on attracting more retail clients to gather assets.

Van Eck builds on its commodities expertise with plans for a ‘minor metals’ ETF focused on companies that produce some of the rarest and most thinly traded industrial materials on the planet.

State Street Global Advisors, the Boston-based fund sponsor of the SPDR family of exchange-traded funds, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer a new equity ETF tracking the Standard & Poor’s Global Natural Resources Index, which has a lighter allocation to energy companies than one of the more popular ETFs it will compete against.

Invesco PowerShares, the Wheaton, Ill.-based fund sponsor known for its Nasdaq QQQQ Trust ETF (Nasdaq: QQQQ), filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to change indexes underlying three existing funds and one that it has in the works.

The SEC remains focused on preventing a repeat of the May 6 ‘flash crash,’ the latest example being a proposal on when erroneous trades should be canceled.

The SEC, focused on solving the issues that made the ‘flash crash’ possible, implemented new rules that will put a stop to trading on various exchanges if and when things get crazy again.

ALPS looks to join the world of master limited partnership exchange-traded products, but with a twist: Its planned fund will be the first ETF in the space.

Claymore delivers on its promise to relaunch its shipping-industry ETF ‘SEA’ after it was forced to close a previous version of the fund because of a sparsely attended shareholder vote.

The SEC is focusing on the prevalence of electronic trading and ways to monitor it more carefully, to try to keep the next ‘flash crash’ from ever happening.