Institutional Investors Double “Smart Beta’ Exposure
Institutional investment clients of Towers Watson doubled their allocation to smart beta strategies over the past two years to $40 billion. The firm sees the continued strong demand for smart beta strategies broadening beyond equities, particularly in the bond market. Towers Watson’s clients include pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, foundations and insurance companies.
ETF Investor Psychology
To be successful at anything, requires discipline. In athletics, you must train your body to make certain movements at certain times so that during competition, those movements become second nature and you can perform them without thinking. To be healthy, one must be disciplined to eat right and get proper exercise. And to be successful, […]
Investors in this iShares Frontier ETF face unusually high capital gains obligation
One of the reasons ETFs have been adopted so widely is that ETFs are typically very tax-efficient investments, especially when compared to mutual funds, because their structure typically allows them to avoid shareholder distributions. The operative word in the opening sentence is typically. This year, one particular ETF, the iShares MSCI Frontier Markets 100 ETF […]
Press Release: Endowment IndexTM Historical Data Now Available Through Morningstar, Interactive Data and Bloomberg
APPLETON, Wis., Nov. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ Historical index data for the Endowment IndexTM — calculated by Nasdaq OMX® — is now available through major index and investment databases, including Bloomberg, Morningstar, and Interactive Data. In addition, the 30,000+ advisors on the Envestnet platform can now select the Endowment IndexTM to benchmark client portfolios. Endowment IndexTM […]
United States Commodity ETF files paperwork to be registered under Investment Company Act of 1940
United States Commodity Funds, the Oakland, California-based firm that did so much to popularize futures-based exchange-traded funds focused on commodities, has filed regulatory paperwork describing a broad commodity fund that qualifies for the same tax treatment as a plain-vanilla equity or fixed-income fund. The USCF Dynamic Commodity Index Fund is being registered under the Investment Company […]
Use of Liquid Alts Growing in Self-Directed IRAs
A recent article at WealthManagement.com discussed that interest in self-directed IRAs is growing. A few reasons for this are that more people have begun to accumulate sizeable assets in their retirement plans. and are looking to diversify their portfolios beyond stocks, bonds and mutual funds. As such, there tends to be a greater appetite for alternative assets […]
ETF Model SolutionsTM in the News: Tactical Allocation Funds Prove Market Timing Is Just Hype
Tactical Allocation Funds Prove Market Timing Is Just Hype October 10, 2014 ETF Model SolutionsTM Chief Investment Officer, Prateek Mehrotra was published in an article on Seeking Alpha today discussing the poor results that tactical mutual fund managers have delivered to their investors. The article discusses that in general, because of high fees and poor […]
Why have some target date funds recently increased their equity allocation?
Blackrock, Fidelity and Pacific Investment Management Co have increased their equity allocation within their target date funds in the past year. These shifts have consultants, advisors and analysts questioning not only the reasons behind the move, but the potential consequences, especially if the recent market correction would expand. A few excerpts: “The shared characteristic these funds […]
Citigroup 401(k) Plan participants suit allowed to move forward
Suit alleges plan fiduciaries violated ERISA by offering affiliated funds that charged higher fees. A U.S. District Court judge in New York is allowing a participant lawsuit against plan fiduciaries of the Citigroup 401(k) plan. The case is another instance of an affiliated product that charges higher fees than funds with comparable performance. A copy of […]
The Value Add of Smart Beta
ETF Model SolutionTMs incorporates fundamental indexing (smart beta) strategies in our models where appropriate, including our Endowment Collective Fund, as we see potential to add value and enhance our risk-adjusted returns. The two founders of AQR Capital Management recently wrote piece about smart beta in which they categorize each of the types of approaches and describe how they […]
