NEW LISTINGS

Seeing The World

One-stop shopping. Or, at least, two-stop shopping. That's the idea behind the newly launch global (ex-U.S.) exchange-traded fund (ETF) from State Street Global Advisors (SSgA). 

The new SPDR MSCI ACWI ex-U.S. ETF (AMEX: CWI) is the first ETF to offer U.S. investors broad-based exposure to both developed and emerging international markets in one package. As the name suggests, the fund tracks the MSCI All World Country (ex-U.S.) Index includes the performance of substantially all investable markets outside the U.S. In contrast, most other international ETFs track either developed or emerging markets.

With the launch of the new fund, investors can now own the world in two clicks: one to buy a broad-based U.S. fund, and one to buy CWI. The fund charges 35 basis points in annual expenses, and trades on the American Stock Exchange.

The prospectus is available here.

IndexUniverse.com's initial coverage is available here.

NEW FILINGS

Vanguard Bonds With Investors

The fixed-income filings continue to come hot and heavy. The latest news comes from Vanguard, which filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the right to launch four new ETFs. The funds, benchmarks and expense ratios are:

The SEC filing is available here.  

IndexUniverse.com's full coverage is available here.

As with all Vanguard ETFs, the new bond ETFs are share classes of existing funds. The 11 basis point expense ratios (ER) are significantly lower than the ERs for the traditional "Investor" shares of the original mutual funds (available to everyone), and are in-line with the Admiral shares (available to investors with more than $50,000 to invest).  More importantly, the ERs are also significantly lower than the ERs for competing bond ETFs from iShares, which run from 15 to 20 basis points. One hopes that the new Vanguard filings will encourage BGI to lower its fees, but that has decidedly not been the case in other asset classes.

iShares Junkies

Speaking of fixed-income ETFs, Barclays Global Investors (BGI) filed papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the right to launch a new high-yield (or "junk bond") ETF.  The iShares iBOXX Liquid High Yield Index ETF will track a liquidity-ranked index of fifty dollar-denominated high-yield bonds. 

Fees and the ticker symbol are not yet available.

The fund will be the first high-yield ETF, looping in a hot area of the market with the surging interest in all-things-ETF.  Some market observers, however, question whether now is a good time to own junk bonds, as spreads over investment-grade securities are near historical lows. In other words, the markets aren't compensating investors very highly for taking on the added risk of the high-yield bonds. With a concentrated fund holding just fifty names, investors will have to carefully gauge the trade-off between higher yields and higher risks.

The SEC filing is available here.

IndexUniverse.com's full coverage is available here.

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