Articles (1,608)

Bill Miller, the manager of the Legg Mason Value Trust fund, has managed to do what no other current manager has done - beat the S&P 500 index twelve years in a row. Surely that incredible feat cannot be attributed to random chance or luck. Therefore, it ...Read More

Welcome To Our New ...Read More

Standard & Poor's released a study showing active sector fund managers have fared relatively well against sector indexes that track thin slices of the market over the past five years. However, over the last three years a majority of active funds beat the ...Read More

If you have unanswered questions about the complex inner workings of exchange-traded funds, then look no further. ...Read More

Vanguard announced it will levy a 2% redemption fee on sales of shares held less than two months for nine of its international funds: ...Read More

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 5.99% in April and is up 1.55% for the year. ...Read More

PowerShares Capital Management will introduce two exchange-traded funds tracking new proprietary indexes developed by the American Stock Exchange. The Dynamic Market Portfolio and the Dynamic OTC Portfolio will both launch later this week on May 1 and ...Read More

Rydex, the fund family best known for its lineup of sector and leveraged index funds catering to active traders, said it will soon launch an exchange-traded fund that tracks an equal-weighted S&P 500 ...Read More

ETF Advisors announced it would close its four Treasury FITR funds: Treasury 1 FITR (TFT), Treasury 2 FITR (TOU), Treasury 5 FITR (TFI), and Treasury 10 FITR (TTE). ...Read More

New York-based index provider Standard & Poor's released the results of its 2002 annual survey of assets linked directly to its domestic ...Read More

The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets began trading today on the American Stock Exchange under the ticker EEM. The new exchange-traded fund, managed by Barclays Global Investors, is benchmarked to the MSCI Emerging Markets Free (EMF) index. ...Read More

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New York-based index provider Standard & Poor's released the results of its 2002 annual survey of assets linked directly to its domestic benchmarks. Based on the 2002 survey responses, S&P estimates that approximately 90% of the total S&P indexed assets ...Read More

Numerous studies on the performance of diversified U.S. equity portfolios have demonstrated the central role that asset allocation policy plays in determining variation of portfolio ...Read More

Vanguard announced yesterday that it will transition to new MSCI U.S. equity benchmarks for several of its index funds, a move the Valley Forge-based fund group has been positioning itself for over the past several months, and perhaps years. ...Read More

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 4.29% in March, and is down 1.33% for the year, according to Dow Jones Indexes. Measuring Europe, the Dow Jones STOXX 50 index was up 3.26% for March, and is down 7.11% for the ...Read More

One thing the mutual fund industry does well is to create a product and then create demand for that product, even when the product may not be one that is in the investors' best ...Read More

International diversification is an issue that should have been settled a long time ago. However, many investors believe that cross-border diversification increases risk. Now, new support from academics provide new evidence of its value as a risk reducer. ...Read More

The U.S. blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3.06% in February - the Dow is off 6.4% for the year. Measuring Europe, the Dow Jones STOXX 50 index was down 5.54% for February; year-to-date the index is down 12.2%. The Dow Jones Asian Titans 50 ...Read More

A visit from one of the world's leading investors casts a fresh light on how markets work and the effects of the war in ...Read More

Chicago-based Morningstar, Inc. has ventured into a crowded index industry with the debut of 16 proprietary equity benchmarks that correspond to the firm's heralded style boxes. Morningstar's director of research, Paul Kaplan, sat down with us to discuss ...Read More

The combined assets of the nation's exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were $95.66 billion in January, according to the Investment Company Institute, falling from a December 2002 high of over $102 billion. ...Read More

Magellan's rationale for charging $330 million more than Vanguard's S&P 500 fund every year is simple: They provide active-management to enhance performance and beat the S&P 500. Here's how Magellan's manager Robert Stansky described his ...Read More

Since the performance data on this site was recently updated, we thought now might be a good time to post a primer on how to use the handy data tools and screeners on IndexFunds.com. ...Read More

Lee Kranefuss is the chief executive officer for Barclays Global Investors' Individual Investor and Exchange-Traded Products Business, where he is responsible for all of BGI's exchange-traded funds products as well as traditional mutual ...Read More

The Vanguard Group said it supports the SEC proposal that could force mutual funds to disclosure more information about portfolio holdings and fund costs, according to a statement released today by the Valley Forge-based fund shop. ...Read More

San Francisco-based Barclays Global Investors continues to beef up its lineup of international iShares with two new exchange-traded funds tracking the broad South African and Chinese markets. ...Read More

The U.S. blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3.03% in January, after losing 16.76% in 2002. Broad international indexes were also down for the month. Measuring Europe, the Dow Jones STOXX 50 index was down 10.45% for January. The Dow Jones Asian ...Read More

Gene Fama Jr. is vice president of Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), the funds management firm founded on the academic principles of diversification first articulated by his father, Eugene Fama, in the 1960s. He explains to David Chaplin how the DFA ...Read More

One of the most popular investment books of recent times was Dow 36,000: The New Strategy For Profiting From The Coming Rise In The Stock Market. The premise of the authors, James K. Glassman and Kevin A. Hassett, was that equity investing was not risky - ...Read More

Standard & Poor's Indexes recently developed two interesting benchmarks, and investors may soon have access to them through passive ...Read More

Last week Standard & Poor's released its quarterly active vs. passive mutual fund scorecard with stark results: in most cases a majority of active funds have failed to beat their relevant index in the bear market of the past couple ...Read More

Exchange-traded funds often have lower expense ratios than comparable traditional index funds. However, since ETFs trade like stocks, investors must pay commissions every time they buy or sell ...Read More

SEC Votes in Favor of Fund Proxy Vote ...Read More

Exchange-traded funds generally have lower expense ratios than comparable traditional index funds. However, since ETFs trade like stocks, investors must pay commissions every time they buy or sell ...Read More

Standard & Poor's disclosed the second installment of its running quarterly scorecard that tracks the number of actively-managed mutual funds that best relevant S&P ...Read More

IndexFunds.com's second book, Index Funds - Strategies for Investment Success by Will McClatchy, recently hit the shelves. The book is designed as a guide for investors of all stripes who want to learn more about the benefits of index or passive ...Read More

Having spent nearly a decade writing about investment management for the little guy, I have come to the conclusion that I no longer believe in the basic premise of my public persona - a surreal cross between Harry Markowitz and Johnny Appleseed, as a ...Read More

The "Nifty-Fifty" was a group of large-cap growth stocks that became the market's darlings in the late 1960s and into the early 1970s. They were great companies that became known as "one-decision" stocks - stocks that you should buy, no matter how ...Read More

John Bogle heads the Bogle Financial Markets Research Center, a think-tank funded by Vanguard and located at the company headquarters in quiet Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. He is the founder of the Vanguard Group and author of several best-selling ...Read More

Barclays Global Investors (BGI) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) January 2 to launch five fixed income exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on Lehman indexes: ...Read More

Excerpts from roundtable discussion with Bob Shakotko, Senior Vice President, S&P Index Services and David Blitzer, S&P 500 Chief Strategist. The full version of the interview was originally published in the December issue of The Index Insider, a new ...Read More

Many investors avoid international exposure in the mistaken belief that they are avoiding unnecessary risk. In fact, by failing to diversify cross border they actually substantially increase their risk. Token positions do little benefit the portfolio. The ...Read More

Holiday News ...Read More

Investing is a noisy process. In the short term, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between cause and effect. In the longer term, even with the best planning, wide variations in results must be expected. Investors must make decisions in an ...Read More

Peter Di Teresa is a consultant at Chicago-based Morningstar, Inc. Before moving on to a new role within Morningstar, he wrote the "Ask the Professor" column that frequently addressed issues concerning index investing. ...Read More

In a previous article we looked at the tax benefits of exchange-traded funds, as well as fund swap strategies to harvest portfolio losses. This time we continue on with more ETF ...Read More

Retail index fund giant Vanguard yesterday announced that shareholders have approved several investment policy changes for various funds. Two of the changes apply specifically to Vanguard's stable of index ...Read More

As of the market close on November 25, The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 5.39% for the month. Excluding October's gain of over 10%, this is the biggest monthly gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average since November 2001, according to Dow Jones ...Read More

Buy and hold. Diversify. Put your money in index funds. Pay attention to the one thing you can control--costs--and keep them as low as ...Read More

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the volatility of individual stocks. This has resulted in an increase in the cross-sectional volatility (dispersion) of returns in not only the U.S., but in international markets as well. It is important to ...Read More

Exchange-traded funds are inherently more tax efficient than actively managed mutual funds, which have been rightly criticized for their tax-inefficiency. Tax-efficiency is a critical issue for advisors and investors because delaying the taxation of ...Read More

There are currently 281 exchange-traded funds listed around the world, with over $140 billion in assets under management, according to a new report by Boston-based indexing giant State Street Global Advisors. ...Read More

After years of development and regulatory hurdles, fixed-income ETFs have finally hit the market. San Francisco-based Barclays Global Investors beat ETF Advisors to the punch with a family of iShares tied to Lehman Brothers bond indexes. New York-based ...Read More

Four new exchange-traded funds tied to Bank of New York American Depository Receipt (ADR) indexes began trading on the Nasdaq Exchange today. Called BLDRS, the new members of the ETF family will have expense ratios of 0.30%. The Bank of New York will ...Read More

Standard & Poor's says it will begin keeping tabs on nearly 2,000 actively managed mutual funds to measure how they stack up against relevant S&P indexes. The new quarterly scorecard will use more sophisticated techniques to give investors a clearer picture of how active ...Read More

The one thing Wall Street tells you that you can always take to the bank is: "Past performance is no guarantee of future performance." Of course, they really hate telling you that, but they are required to. The rest of Wall Street's message is designed to ...Read More

The debut of bond ETFs plus a slew of filings in the pipeline have elevated interest in ETF product development activity. ...Read More

Roy Weitz, CPA is the founder of FundAlarm.com, an independent and noncommercial website that serves as an unofficial community watchdog for the mutual fund industry. Mr. Weitz writes a revealing and colorful monthly commentary on the industry that is ...Read More