Daily ETF Watch: New High Dividend Fund

AdvisorShares today is launching the AdvisorShares Athena High Dividend ETF (DIVI) to invest in U.S. and foreign stocks using a behavioral finance model, part of a string of smart-beta strategies from issuers looking to parcel market-cap-weighted indexes into marketable investment offerings.

The push for smart-beta funds has become trendy among issuers looking to market factor-based funds focusing on volatility, momentum and relative strength, among other factors versus plain-vanilla existing market-cap-weighted ETFs.

The fund’s focus on dividends also highlights investors’ current search for yield in an environment of persistently low interest rates post-2008. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen has signaled the Fed is willing to extend its monetary accommodation given the economy’s continued slow growth.

DIVI’s behavioral- and factor-driven investment process measures active stock fund managers’ behavior, and identifies securities that are held in the top relative weight positions within the equity universe. It then uses a dividend overlay that selects high-yielding stocks for a dividend-weighted investment portfolio.

“We feel many investors are seeking high income with less exposure to credit and interest rate risk, and DIVI looks to provide an established investment approach to selecting stocks with the additional benefits of a high yielding dividend income strategy,” Noah Hamman, chief executive officer at AdvisorShares, said in a press release.

The fund has an expense ratio of 0.99 percent, or $99 for every $10,000 invested, according to the fund’s website.

Name Change

Effective July 31, five iShares funds are getting new names. Those ETFs include the:

• iShares 2015 AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF (IBMD | B-45), which will be renamed the iShares iBonds Sep 2015 AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF
• iShares 2016 AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF (IBME | B-50), which will be renamed the iShares iBonds Sep 2016 AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF
• iShares 2017 AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF (IBMF | B-60), which will be renamed the iShares iBonds Sep 2017 AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF
• iShares 2018 AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF (IBMG | C-37), which will be renamed the iShares iBonds Sep 2018 AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF
• iShares 2019 AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF (IBMH), which will be renamed the iShares iBonds Sep 2019 AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF

The name changes were made public via an electronic communique from the NYSE.