All Things ETF

New ETFcast fund review on an ETF fund that specializes in real estate investing in the United States .

Here is upcoming podcast coverage of ETF funds by sponsor. Review dates and fund sponsors are subject to change. iShares- Barclays Global Fund Advisors - ETF review 12/15 -12/31 Oil and gas Pharmaceutical and health care Real estate Commodities Spdrs- State Street Global Advisors - ETF review 1/15-1/25/2009 Oil & gas Pharmaceutical and health care Real estate Commodities Powershares- Invesco Powershares Capital Management - ETF review 2/10 - 2/14/2009 Oil & gas Pharmaceutical and health care Real estate Commodities ETF review dates are subject to change. For a professional consultation on how ETF Funds can help you achieve your financial goals call us for a no cost consultation at 770-572-2715 or email me with your questions .

By: Rick Walter What is a benchmark and how does it help you or your ETF Fund? A benchmark is a standard against which the performance of a security, mutual fund or investment manager can be measured. Generally, broad market and market-segment stock and bond indexes are used for this purpose. For example, "when evaluating the performance of any investment , it's important to compare it against an appropriate benchmark. In the financial field, there are hundreds of indexes that analysts use to gauge the performance of any given investment including the S&P 500 , the Dow Jones Industrial Average , the Russell 2000 Index and the Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index ." All ETFs are built with a benchmark in mind . Does this make ETFs easier to construct and market? Maybe, according to the total ETF funds chart I have constructed show ETFs proliferating at break neck speed.

By Rick Walter If you have not reviewed the ETF basics posts, click the ETF Shelter labels and start from the beginning. Remember, as an investor you are purchasing ETF shares in the secondary market. You are not buying creation units or any of that. Of course at some point in time I would like to start an ETF Fund and you are welcome to join my fund, then we can all buy creation units and makes lots of money hedging. However we are not there yet. Before you choose an ETF , you may want to start with some type of asset allocation model for yourself, which is the practice of dividing resources among different categories based on your risk tolerance, goals and investment horizon; Common classes for asset allocation models are Equities (stocks) , Fixed income (bonds), and Cash and cash equivalents (treasury securities); other classes of assets such as real estate are also included but can be defined in one of the three categories above. Your asset allocation model should be bui...

By Rick Walter ETF Training & presentation, education and more... There is so much out there. I went to the iShares website and found a series of educational tools, webinars, web casts , tutorials and presentations that may help a beginner and even experienced investors. I was impressed with the tutorials, but I still think that the financial buzzwords in the presentations may be a bit too complex for beginners. However, the site overall presentation and content is very good! What about taxes? By trade I am a tax professional; I believe that all investments should be analyzed first from a tax position, before an investment decision is made. ETFs are labeled as very tax efficient vehicles. Here is a good article, in my opinion, that explains the tax efficiency issue very well for ETFs. Check our external link section for links to websites that I believe provide top notch information on ETFs, including sponsors, distributors and advisers. I will be adding to the list daily. If th...

By Rick Walter An ETF , like any other type of investment company, will have a prospectus. All investors that purchase Creation Units receive a prospectus. Some ETFs also deliver a prospectus to secondary market purchasers. ETFs that do not deliver a prospectus are required to give investors a document known as a Product Description, which summarizes key information about the ETF and explains how to obtain a prospectus. All ETFs will deliver a prospectus upon request. Before purchasing ETF shares, you should carefully read all of an ETF ’s available information , including its prospectus. The websites of the New York Stock Exchange , American Stock Exchange and NASDAQ provide more information about different types of ETFs and how they work. An ETF will have annual operating expenses and may also impose certain shareholders fees that are disclosed in the prospectus. Currently, all ETFs seek to achieve the same return as a particular market indexes . Such an ETF is similar t...

By Rick Walter Investors who want to sell their ETF shares have two options: (1) they can sell individual shares to other investors on the secondary market, or (2) they can sell the Creation Units back to the ETF. In addition, ETFs generally redeem Creation Units by giving investors the securities that comprise the portfolio instead of cash. So, for example, an ETF invested in the stocks contained in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) would give a redeeming shareholder the actual securities that constitute the DJIA instead of cash. Because of the limited redeemability of ETF shares, ETFs are not considered to be—and may not call themselves— mutual funds ."

By Rick Walter "Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs , are investment companies that are legally classified as open-end companies or Unit Investment Trusts (UITs) , but that differ from traditional open-end companies and UITs in the following respects: ETFs do not sell individual shares directly to investors and only issue their shares in large blocks (blocks of 50,000 shares, for example) that are known as " Creation Units ." Investors generally do not purchase Creation Units with cash. Instead, they buy Creation Units with a basket of securities that generally mirrors the ETF ’s portfolio. Those who purchase Creation Units are frequently institutions. After purchasing a Creation Unit, an investor often splits it up and sells the individual shares on a secondary market. This permits other investors (You) to purchase individual shares (instead of Creation Units). I have had limited success buying and selling ETFs earlier this year. Many of them are way-y-y down. Many ETFs a...

Coming soon, I will be blogging on Exchange Trade Funds, what they are and how they can help you, the tax benefits of buying and selling these types of funds, current performance, and the largest dealers in this relatively new market. I think I botched the last blog on the importance of having general liability and business overhead insurance . I think I will pick that topic up again. Somewhere, I lost the importance of the topic in the blog. I will give it another try shortly.

This weekend, I was watching old hero flicks from my 50 movie pack- Warriors DVD collection which I recently bought from Best Buy for $19.99; my 50 movie pack includes classic movies such as Hercules Unchained , The Giant of Marathon , Fury of Achilles and more. I was so excited; I rushed home and started watching some of the movies immediately. I was in heaven; I grew up watching some of these old flicks where women were maidens, men were heroes and monsters evil men and women died justly deserved deaths. I particularly enjoyed one movie called Hercules Unchained - " Hercules exercises poor judgment when he quenches his thirst from an enchanted spring en route to a diplomatic mission in Thebes. He promptly loses his memory and gets sidetracked in the Pleasure Gardens of Queen Omphale . Ulysses, his young companion, desperately tries to help him regain his memory, but in the meantime, the situation in Thebes is reaching a boiling point", as two Kings (brothers) prepare to b...

If you are looking for some ideas in this depressionish market, here are are 10 stocks that are still trading in the positive column within the last 6 to 9 months of 2008. These stocks are still in the 'Land of the Living'. 10 Stocks that can reduce volatility in your portfolio ! I just had to post this SNL Sarah Palin/ Katie Couric interview video spoof. It's so hilarious. Enjoy. You need to have the latest Adobe Flash Player to watch video. Click on the video to play.

Take a deep breath folks. Its gonna be a bumpy ride! I am totally at a lost as to what to fund, buy, sell or recommend? There has got to be some manipulation going on. I feel like the more the Feds offer a bailout the more the wall street cockroaches scurry for cover. Again, up is down and down is up but you can't get any financial contracts to reflect the new market rules. Stay tuned!

Looking for short-term gains and profits. Click on over to UCS Specialty Hedge Funds website and pull up the daily investment package under Exchange Offers. Its a weekly posting of short-term profit plays for investors looking to turn a profit and increase their cash flow now. Current package is a regional bank play.

Have you seen the pirate movie- Pirates of the Caribbean- At World's End ? In the movie, Jack Sparrow, the main pirate character in the movie, has been rescued from Davy Jones Locker by his pirate crew only to find himself stuck somewhere between the land of the dead and the living. The crew (including Jack) only means of getting back to the land of the living is by figuring out the cryptic clues provided by an ancient Chinese chart of maps. Well they figured out alright-how to get back, by deciphering a clue where 'up was down' and down was up'. Like the market right now- 'up is down' and 'down is up' . Hah, hah. I am serious though. The market really sucks? I seem to be losing money in certain oil and gas stocks even though oil has been climbing to new highs daily. I am like what the heck. Yes, it seems like I am always losing lots of money in the market, but sometimes blue-chip investments touted as safe sometimes can be really just as unsafe. My tho...

Wow, the market is in a serious sideways funk. Every sector is taking it on the chin. Even, if you try trading options- which I have, you will still lose a crap load of money; I have. Nothing seems to be working. I have been in only one (real) Bear market in my lifetime and that was in 1987. However the subsequent losses after the initial plunge on "Black Monday" of 1987, was not as persistent and severe as this one. Wow! Stay tuned for the next post, maybe we will find the light somewhere.

Yes, the trend is always your friend my fellow investors, but it can also be your enemy. Knowing when the trend has turned into some sort of market bubble will help you prevent huge losses to your portfolio and other financial assets. The two industries in focus right now are the financial and the oil and gas indutry . Which group is a potential bubble, a bubble about to burst, or a bubble that has already burst is the million dollar question of the day. In previous articles, I spoke of building a long-term bank portfolio because I believed that many bank and financial stocks were beaten down sufficiently enough to take another look at the sector. We started with BBT Corporation ( BBT :$32.73), iShares Trust- Dow Jones US Fin Sec ( IYF : $81.70) and JP Morgan ( JPM : $42.32). Our fledgling bank portfolio of three stocks was up by 3.01% as of 5/11/2008 but is now down over the last trading week of 5/19/2008 by about -2.64% . Do we continue building our bank portfolio or do we tak...

Wow, what a horrible week! I lost $742 dollars in the currency markets or 33% of my original investment. I consider myself lucky though, I had only invested $ 2,250 . Still, I could not get it right. Luckily I have a secret weapon to handle all of this insanity. Meet the newest member of the family. It's Pepe at 3 weeks! Wow-e-e. Isn't he sweet! My insanity cure all! Trading on the Forex can be ver-r-ry tough. For example, I tried trading the EUR/USD pair, but that position completely reversed on me after a few days; of course, I reversed my positions but the pair stabilized and went the other way. I tried the USD/JPY pair as the dollar was showing some good strength against other currencies based on the Feds interest rate cut a few weeks ago, but that position just ended up stalling for three days. I tried the EUR/JPY pair, but nothing there. That pair again just stalled then went south after three days of flip flopping around. In the meantime I just kept losing money. By...

Well its Sunday April 13, 2:44 am in the morning and I could not sleep. Went out the other night and drank to much, Hah. Didn't want it to end. I am becoming a lush. lol. Thought, I would do a little update as I couldn't stop thinking about an article I had read in Reuters on Friday April 11, 2008- " Bank rally is a bit premature : James Saft ". He makes the case that the recent rally in the banking/financial sector is very premature, because many banks have not cleaned up their balance sheets yet, and that the downward trend in financial stocks since last year may still have a ways to go before investing in the financial sector becomes a good idea again. Well, I thought that article made a bit of sense. I for one was thinking that the banking and financial sector may have been beaten down a bit too much and there may be an opportunity to make some money, ' moulah' , 'dinero' , somewhere in there- but I was also thinking if its worth the risk? How woul...

The trend is your friend and so far the trend has been down. There hasn't been much to cheer about these days. As long as there is a freeze in the credit markets the equity markets will continue to suffer. Borrowing money is how American businesses grow. No money, no growth. I think the Feds have done a good job in providing liquidity to the markets. Banks and other financial institutions are now in a better position to re-lend that money to their clients at better rates. However, what if banks continue to cautiously lend and continue to tighten credit standards so that not even their best borrowers can qualify? What would be the long-term effects of such stringent lending policies? Which industries would be the most affected and how can an investor profit from such a scenario as this continues to play out in the credit markets over the next 6 to 12 months? These are issues that I will try to consider as I make my stock or bond recommendations over the next 6 to 12 months. The stoc...