Banking is lagging other financial industries.

High-flying ETFs in several sectors eclipsed the S&P 500 gains.

On Oct. 24, State Street Global Advisors changed the indexes on five of its ETFs from benchmarks provided by KBW to a quintet from Standard & Poor’s in a shift that belied a bit of intrigue involving Invesco PowerShares.

For indexing nerds, the story behind competing families of PowerShares and SSgA financial ETFs is worth digging into.

SSgA dumps five KBW indexes, and PowerShares plans to pick four of them up, but what’s really going on?

PowerShares plans financial ETFs that, like some of SSgA’s, are also based on KBW indexes.

The iShares Dow Jones U.S. Broker-Dealers Index Fund (NYSEArca: IAI) offers investors a unique way to tap into the strengthening financial sector without betting on any specific company stock, according to a new article from MarketWatch's John Spence.

Though the fund—which invests in companies like Charles Schwab and Goldman Sachs—lost significant ground recently following the slump in the stock market, it is still up more than 90 percent from its March lows.

Exchange - Traded Notes

Barclays Bank PLC, a division of Barclays PLC, won approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a new kind of security that straddles the line between structured debt and ETFs. Dubbed " i Path ETNs," the new products trade like ETFs but use a debt-based struct u re that changes the tax implications, risks and arbitrage opportunities on the funds.