Daily ETF Watch: Hedged Japan ETFs Live

WisdomTree is carving up Japan with new currency-hedged sector ETFs.

The firm behind the ETF of the Year, the $11.4 billion WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity Fund (DXJ | B-53), today is launching five more currency-hedged Japan-focused ETFs focused on sectors to capitalize on the country’s growth story, according to an NYSE communique.

The success of DXJ, which gathered $9.74 billion last year, and the inclination to offer more currency-hedged ETFs, is related to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic growth stimulus policies.

Abe’s reforms, dubbed “Abenomics,” involve a three-pronged attack plan of massive fiscal stimulus, more aggressive monetary easing from the Bank of Japan, and infrastructure spending to weaken the yen, thus making Japanese exports cheaper than their competitors’.

WisdomTree is hoping its latest proposed sector-focused offerings will capture investor interest the way DXJ has. The new funds and their proposed tickers include the:

• WisdomTree Japan Hedged Tech, Media and Telecom Fund (DXJT)
• WisdomTree Japan Hedged Financials Fund (DXJF)
• WisdomTree Japan Hedged Real Estate Fund (DXJR)
• WisdomTree Japan Hedged Capital Goods Fund (DXJC)
• WisdomTree Japan Hedged Health Care Fund (DXJH)

The five new ETFs—the very first sector ETFs focused on the world’s No. 3 economy—all have expense ratios of 0.43 percent, or $43 for every $10,000 invested, after a fee waiver of 5 basis points. By comparison, DXJ has an annual expense ratio of 48 basis points, or $48 for each $10,000 invested.

Filings

State Street Global Advisors has put into registration a short-duration municipal bond ETF at a time when muni-bond ETFs are gaining ground after taking a beating in 2013 in the wake of the Federal Reserve’s first suggestion of tapering last spring.

Interestingly, the asset class’s strong performance seems linked to growing investor confidence that rates are likely to rise slowly, and has come despite credit woes in Puerto Rico—the ninth-largest municipal bond issuer.

The SPDR Nuveen S&P Short Duration High Yield Municipal Bond ETF will track the S&P Short Duration Municipal Yield Index, which measures the performance of both high-yield and investment-grade municipal bonds in the short-duration range of one to 12 years maturity, according to a regulatory filing.

The index is a subset of the S&P Municipal Bond Index and includes publicly issued U.S.-dollar-denominated, fixed-rate, municipal bonds that have a remaining maturity or call date greater than or equal to one calendar month and have a minimum outstanding amount of $2 million.

Associated fees and tickers were not yet available for the fund.

‘Core’ ETFs Name And Index Changes

iShares is tweaking the name of two “Core” bond funds as well as their respective indexes in the next two months.

Effective June 3, the iShares Core Short-Term U.S. Bond ETF (ISTB | B-67) will be renamed the iShares Core Short-Term USD Bond ETF, and its index will change from the Barclays U.S. Government/Credit 1-5 Year Bond Index to the Barclays U.S. 1-5 Year Universal Index, according to a regulatory filing.

Also, the Shares Core Long-Term U.S. Bond ETF (ILTB | B-98) will change its name to the
iShares Core Long-Term USD Bond ETF, and its index will change from the Barclays U.S. Long Government /Credit Bond Index to the Barclays U.S. 10+ Year Universal Index.