Articles (1,565)

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

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

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

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

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 11% for the month of October to close at 8427.41, according to Dow Jones Indexes. This represents the largest one-month gain in the index since January 1987. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 15.91% for the ...Read More

Imagine being invited to an award banquet only to find out later the main course is . . . you. That's exactly what happened to Wall Street analysts at the annual ceremony for Institutional Investor magazine's "All-Star Research Team" awards earlier this ...Read More

Four new U.S. Treasury exchange-traded funds began trading today on the American Stock Exchange. The new funds, introduced by ETF Advisers, track Treasury securities with one, two, five and 10-year maturities. Called "fighters" - Fixed Income Trust ...Read More

Financial advisors often use index fund tax-swap strategies as a way to maintain equity exposure while offsetting realized or unrealized gains in a portfolio, which is the closest thing to a free lunch in investing. Exchange-traded funds are becoming a ...Read More

Total exchange-traded fund assets declined over $9 billion in September to about $82 billion, according to the Investment Company Institute. The ICI, the trade group for the mutual fund industry, keeps monthly tabs on ETF ...Read More

Dow Jones Indexes said Credit Suisse Asset Management has licensed some of its global Sector Titans indexes for ETFs to be launched later this week. The new ETFs will be tied to the Dow Jones Banks Titans 30, the Dow Jones Technology Titans 30, and the ...Read More

Ron Ross is the author of a new book entitled The Unbeatable Market: Taking the Indexing Path to Financial Peace of Mind. This one caught our attention because of its accessability, and also because the author refuses to pull punches when it comes to ...Read More

UBS Global Asset Management introduced two new exchange-traded funds: the Fresco Dow Jones STOXX 500 (FEU) and the Fresco Dow Jones Euro STOXX 50 (FEZ). The new ETFs, which track the European and Eurozone markets, began trading on the New York Stock ...Read More

Khalid Ghayur knows a thing or two about indexes. He is global director of research and chief investment strategist for index provider Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI). Mr. Ghayur, who answered our questions from his Princeton office, is ...Read More

As managing director of the quantitative equity group at Vanguard, Gus Sauter oversees the management of $200 billion in 24 index funds. He is also responsible for the management of $4 billion in Vanguard's actively-managed funds, and $1 billion in ...Read More

Finding index funds that make up the building blocks of a diversified portfolio is important, but fitting them together is the real challenge. For our favorite index funds covering various asset classes, please see our editors' picks. ...Read More

This portfolio is a very simple interpretation of slice and dice, with large caps coupled with small value. This portfolio deviates from the total stock market approach by overweighting small value stocks. ...Read More

This portfolio shouldn't be confused with the strategies that involve active funds. The idea of core and more is to lay down a core portfolio and explore by overweighting certain asset classes. Core and more portfolios can take on many shapes and sizes ...Read More

This portfolio is similar to the basic domestic stock/bond split, but this time we add a broad international index fund for further diversification. ...Read More

It doesn't get much simpler than this. We imagine John Bogle would like the elegant simplicity of this two-fund portfolio - one total market stock and one total market bond. ...Read More

The lists below single out some of favorite index funds covering the international and emerging markets equity asset classes. Many of the funds are based on MSCI's international EAFE ...Read More

Behavioral finance has provided us with many valuable insights into how human behavior can impact investment results. For example, we have learned that individuals are highly risk averse - on average odds of 2:1 or greater are required to entice them to ...Read More

Bond index funds can reduce risk in a portfolio. Indexing bonds also makes sense because of their lower yields compared to stocks. We like short-term bonds because of their low risk and lack of correlation with equity ...Read More

As other corporations come clean, mutual funds still gloss over costs, hide top-dog pay and keep secret how they cope when self-interest conflicts with ...Read More

Chicago-based Morningstar recently announced the availability of 16 proprietary equity indexes that correspond to its popular style boxes, which are recognizable to most mutual fund investors. We sat down with Morningstar managing director Don Phillips to ...Read More

We've been dancing to salsa music and downing piroshki to keep with the spirit of International Week here at IndexFunds.com. Maybe we're just looking for a diversion from the U.S. stock market, which suffered the worst quarter in recent memory. ...Read More

A sagging stock market continued to drag down most equity indexes in September, and third quarter returns were likewise ugly. The broad Russell 3000 index fell 16.2% during the third quarter on the heels of a 13.1% decline in the second quarter, according ...Read More

As part of International Week here at IndexFunds.com, we recently sat down with Steven Schoenfeld of Barclays Global Investors. He is the chief business strategist for BGI's international equity products, encompassing approximately $65 billion in ...Read More

So you've got a house, a broad section of the U.S. stock market, and some bonds. You think you're diversified? Think ...Read More

San Francisco-based Barclays Global Investors today announced it has filed a prospectus with the SEC for an iShares exchange-traded fund tied to the MSCI Emerging Markets Free index. If approved, it will be the first emerging markets ETF - currently BGI ...Read More

Standard & Poor's unveiled the list of forty hedge funds in its upcoming benchmark that will seek to track the largely unregulated industry. The S&P Hedge Fund Index will be divided into three sub-indexes with funds broken down by investment style: ...Read More

The pundits always lecture us about not chasing performance, but perhaps seeing the carnage investors inflicted upon themselves with ill-timed sector fund investments the past few years is the best way to make that lesson stick. ...Read More

The staid world of indexing has been shaken up in the past few years by new competition and innovations. We sat down briefly with Diane Garnick to talk about some recent developments in passive ...Read More

Recently we've been getting questions from folks about broad equal-weighted index funds. Apparently some investors have noticed that an equal-weighted Wilshire 5000 index has outperformed the market-capitalization-weighted Wilshire ...Read More

Index provider FTSE Group yesterday launched a new family of global growth and value equity benchmarks. They include new country-specific style indexes covering developed and advanced emerging markets nations, as well as regional and global benchmarks for ...Read More

"Innovate Or Evaporate." That's what it says on the Fortune mouse pad on my desk, compliments of the venerable magazine publisher that also manages a family of equity benchmarks. In light of recent events, other index providers would do well to adopt that ...Read More

Retail index fund giant Vanguard today filed a preliminary proxy statement with the SEC seeking shareholder approval on several investment policy changes for many of its index ...Read More

DFA manages $36 billion, of which about $23 billion is for institutions, with some $13 billion through funds sold to individual investors through financial advisors. It has no retail offerings -- you can't buy into their funds the way you would at ...Read More

Financial economists have demonstrated that the most important determinant of a portfolio's return is its asset allocation - the exposure to equity (and within equities the exposure to the risk factors of size and value) and fixed income (and within fixed ...Read More

While index investing is generally accepted as a successful long-term strategy for large cap investing, it is still a common belief that active managers can beat small cap index benchmarks. This misconception is due to the perceived opportunity to add ...Read More

Barclays Global Investors recently introduced four exchange-traded funds that track fixed-income indexes, and the move represents a critical and long-awaited development for ETF investors. Bonds are an important part of a balanced portfolio because of the ...Read More

The New York Stock Exchange today began trading six new additional exchange-traded funds on the basis of unlisted trading privileges (UTP). They include the four new bond iShares, the iShares MSCI Japan (EWJ), and the Vanguard Total Stock Market VIPERs ...Read More

Standard & Poor's index committee decided in July to replace seven foreign stocks in the S&P 500 with domestic ones, and the shift affects countless index investors. For example, the Vanguard 500 fund was the nation's largest mutual fund at the end of ...Read More

After clearing the $90 billion asset plateau for the first time in May, combined assets of the 102 exchange-traded funds listed in the U.S. fell to $88.95 billion in June, according to the latest figures from the Investment Company Institute. ...Read More

The first fixed-income exchange-traded funds began trading on the American Stock Exchange today, bringing the total number of ETFs listed on the AMEX to 121. The new funds, which are managed by San Francisco-based Barclays Global Investors and have ...Read More

The financial media seems to love to take shots at indexing in bear markets, and now is obviously one of those times. The Wilshire 5000 index, the yardstick for the broad domestic stock market, is down a wrenching 16.60% for the year ending June 2002, ...Read More

The Vanguard Group today filed an application with the SEC to introduce exchange-traded fund shares for three of its existing international index funds. Pending SEC approval, European Stock Index, Pacific Stock Index, and Emerging Markets Stock Index will ...Read More

Exchange-traded funds allow investors to track indexes in real time, but for several reasons they can't provide perfect correlation. Differences in fund and benchmark returns may arise - here is a list of some of the more common causes. ...Read More