
I spent part of last week in New York attending the Journal of Indexes editorial board meeting and the S&P 500 50th anniversary birthday bash. Both were great events, and gave me a lot of insight into what index developers are thinking about these days.
I decided to take a look at valuations in the asset management space to get a feel for how the rumored purchase price of Rydex stacks up.
Matt - you had some interesting comments on valuations, but from what I heard about the Rydex sale, the levels you're talking about seem to be holding. How does $1 billion sound to you? In cash.
You mention that seed money is drying up in the ETF space, Jim, and that’s true: we’ve seen funds like the HealthShares launch with as little as $2.5 million in seed money. A few years ago, that would have been $25 million, easy.
I received a note last night from a panelist mentioning that in our FRA conference today in New York, we might want to talk about the issue discussed in Diya Gullapalli's recent WJS article - no seed money for new ETFs - and how that has shifted the industry.