|
In a major new filing, ProShares has petitioned the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the right to launch twenty-five new leveraged, inverse and inverse-leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including the first-ever ProShares international and fixed-income products. The funds are designed to provide 200%, negative 100% and negative 200% exposure to the daily movement of their benchmark indexes. Like all ProShares ETFs, they change 0.95% in expenses. Curiously, the filing only covers inverse (“Short”) and inverse-leveraged (“UltraShort”) ETFs for international and fixed-income. We can assume that leveraged (+200%) ETFs are in the works, but those haven’t hit the SEC yet. The most highly anticipated ETFs in the new filing are the international funds, which cover four very high-profile markets: | Short MSCI EAFE | UltraShort MSCI EAFE | | Short MSCI Emerging Markets | UltraShort MSCI Emerging Markets | | Short MSCI Japan | UltraShort MSCI Japan | | Short FTSE/Xinhua China 25 | UltraShort FTSE/Xinhua China 25 |
Traders are certain to jump at the chance to gain leveraged exposure to the highly volatile markets, and each of these funds will likely gain assets quickly. To date, ProShares has had the most success with high-profile and high volatility indexes; the emerging markets and FTSE/Xinhua indexes certainly fit that bill. ProShares' filing also includes an interesting group of fixed-income products: | Short Lehman Brothers 7-10 Year U.S. Treasury | UltraShort Lehman Brothers 7-10 Year U.S. Treasury | | Short Lehman Brothers 20+ Year U.S. Treasury | UltraShort Lehman Brothers 20+ Year U.S. Treasury | | Short iBoxx $ Liquid Investment Grade | UltraShort iBoxx $ Liquid Investment Grade | | Short iBoxx $ Liquid High Yield | UltraShort iBoxx $ Liquid High Yield |
Rounding things out are three sector funds: | Ultra NASDAQ Biotechnology | Short NASDAQ Biotechnology | UltraShort NASDAQ Biotechnology | | Ultra Dow Jones Select Biotechnology | Short Dow Jones Select Biotechnology | UltraShort Dow Jones Select Biotechnology | | Ultra Dow Jones Select Telecommunications | Short Dow Jones Select Telecommunications | UltraShort Dow Jones Select Telecommunications |
The ProShares ETFs have been one of the fastest-growing ETF families over the past year, and this new filing is likely to extend that streak. |
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Newsvine
RSS
I have seen alot of these fixed income ETF's being launched. What value do the Credit Ratings that are being assigned to these by Rating Agencies like S&P and Moodys carry? I understand that some of these ratings carry a whole lot of value in the Corporate Marketplace and with certain Institutional Investors, but I wanted to see if the rated options were better investments because of the full disclosure that they provide to the agencies.