Articles (1,551)

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 ...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 ...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 ...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. ...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 ...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 ...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, ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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, ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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, ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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, ...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, ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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), ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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 ...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 ...Read More

The historical record provided by academic studies is very clear that the winning investment strategy is to invest in funds that are passively-managed index funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and passive ...Read More

Russell indexes are becoming more widely accepted by institutional investors, according to a recent study of over 3,6000 U.S. equity products listed in Nelson Information's Marketplace Web database. The 10 ...Read More

The Vanguard Group today announced that two new funds will begin trading on Wednesday - Vanguard Mid-Cap Growth (VMGRX) and Vanguard International Explorer ...Read More

The major domestic stock index providers have reported June 2002 ...Read More

The New York Stock Exchange today launched four equity indexes that track the performance of NYSE-listed stocks from broad market sectors. ...Read More

San Francisco-based Barclays Global Investors today announced that four iShares tied to bond indexes will begin trading on the American Stock Exchange on July 26. The fixed-income ETFs, the first to trade in ...Read More

The benefits of using index funds to invest in the U.S. stock market have been well documented, but some make the argument that indexing international markets is a sure way to underperform. The smoking gun in ...Read More

After surging ahead earlier this week, most equity indexes fell sharply going into the weekend. It wasn't a great week for most equity fund investors, and a look at 1-year index returns shows pain has been the ...Read More

The total assets of all exchange-traded funds that trade in the U.S. rose to $92.86 billion in May 2002, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry's trade group. Total ETF assets ...Read More

In what seems like both a blessing and a curse for retail investors, exchange-traded funds offer the ability to invest in thin equity market slices cheaply relative to traditional sector mutual funds. ...Read More

The physical signs are impossible to conceal: sweating and increased palpitations at every market blip or earnings announcement; an uncontrollable twitch in your "trading finger"; that involuntary trance-like ...Read More

Currently there are exchange-traded funds available that track style indexes from Russell, Standard & Poor's/Barra, and Dow Jones. At first glance these indexes seem similar, but as we've seen before subtle ...Read More

A long-standing tenet of investing is that a diversified portfolio should include a meaningful foreign stock component. During the awesome bull market in U.S. stocks in the late 1990's, however, many investors ...Read More

Here's how major equity indexes fared in May 2002, broken down by index ...Read More