U.K. investors now have direct access to ETFs tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ-100, two of the United States' most iconic indexes that also happen to underlie two of the largest and most well-known ETFs listed stateside. Société Générale's Lyxor Asset Management launched four funds on the London Stock Exchange last Friday, including the Lyxor ETF Nasdaq-100 and the Lyxor ETF Dow Jones Industrial Average.

But one has to wonder what interest investors will have in those two indexes. Although the industrial average is probably the best-known market indicator in the world, it is ultimately a very narrow-based index (or rather average, since it is not technically an index) with a methodology that is vague at best. Only 30 stocks are used to represent the industries and companies that are driving the U.S. economy, which remains the largest in the world.

And then there's the NASDAQ -100, which has a more clearly defined methodology but is undermined by its arbitrariness. It takes the largest 100 nonfinancial stocks listed on the NASDAQ Stock Market-excluding the vast number of stocks listed on the NYSE-and weights them using a fairly complex system. While many view it as a bet on the U.S. technology sector, there are plenty of available ETFs tracking pure-play indexes with much clearer methodologies.

And yet these new funds from Lyxor have the potential to do quite well also, if only because of the global marketing power behind their names; they are two of the world's most quoted indexes. The firm has separate funds tracking both indexes cross-listed on exchanges across Europe-the DJIA ETF had more than $500 million at the end of 2007, while the NASDAQ-100 ETF had nearly $300 million. It charges 0.50% in annual fees for the new DJIA fund and 0.30% for the new NASDAQ-100 fund.

The other funds launched at the same time on the LSE include one tracking the MSCI World Index and another tracking the MSCI U.S. Index. The underlying indexes are both constructed based on MSCI's relatively simple and transparent float-adjusted, market-cap-weighted methodology. The Lyxor ETF MSCI USA tracks an index of 635 stocks representing roughly 85% of the U.S. stock market; it comes with an expense ratio of 0.35%. The Lyxor ETF MSCI World tracks a broad index covering nearly 2,000 stocks from developed markets around the world; it charges an expense ratio of 0.45%. As with the other funds, the indexes underlie similar Lyxor funds listed on the European continent that also have hundreds of millions of dollars in assets.

Prices for all four ETFs are calculated in both U.S. dollars and British pounds.