The Claymore/S&P Global Dividend Opportunities Index ETF (LVL) recently received a complete overhaul. Until September 30, LVL was known as the Claymore-BBD High Income Index ETF and tracked an index of U.S. listed securities with potentially high income and superior risk/return profiles.
The Wall Street Journal recently revisited one of the main differences between mutual funds and ETFs – capital gains distributions. In the article, Fund Investors Face Risk of Tax Hit Despite Losses, the Journal points out that despite a year in which the average U.S. diverisified stock fund is down 33%, some investors will have to pay hefty tax bills on their losing funds anyway.
Now that Q3 is over, we now know that 9 out of 10 managers of midcap stock funds failed to beat the S&P MidCap 400 Index according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
As the broad market struggles to climb back from new lows, one group of stocks are doing just fine. Small cap value stocks are up for the week, the month, QTD and 5% YTD while the rest of the market is down 15% on the year.
The government bailout over the weekend of Fannie Mae and Freddie Machas resulted in huge losses today for shareholders of the two firms. As of mid-day Eastern, the common stock of both Fannie (FNM) and Freddie (FRE) are down over 80% as a result of the takeover.
In a market that is down for the year and continues to present an uncertain outlook, which ETFs have managed to hold onto their value at this point in the year? Setting aside the volatile energy and commodities sectors and the idea of shorting financials, we were still able to find five ETF categories that are unchanged or even higher from January levels.
Ford Motor Company (F) announced today that it plans to dilute shareholders to the tune of $500 million to buy back debt. As an ETF investor, you should be asking yourself – “Which of my ETFs are exposed to Ford?”.
This year’s Presidential Address to the American Finance Association (AFA), The Cost of Active Investing, concludes that investors spend 0.67% of the aggregate value of the market each year searching for superior returns.
The SEC has fined a well respected Mutual Fund manager for allegedly violating its own investment policies.
India’s fast pace of growth and the slowing global economy appear to be on a collision course. One of the world’s fastest growing economies over the past 5 years, economists are now predicting slower growth for India in 2008 and 2009.