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NEW LISTINGS

Muni Melee

They’ve built it … now will investors come?

That’s the question in the municipal bond exchange-traded fund (ETF) space, which went from promise to reality last week as the first two ETFs hit the market.

Barclays Global Investors (BGI) won the coveted first-mover advantage by launching its iShares S&P National Municipal Bond ETF (AMEX: MUB) on the American Stock Exchange on September 10. The fund debuted with a 0.25% expense ratio and a whopping $300 million in seed capital.

No sooner did BGI have its fund on the market, however, than State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) put out a press release announcing plans to launch its first muni bond ETF on September 13. What’s more, after seeing BGI’s pricing on the fund, SSgA priced its SPDR Lehman Municipal Bond ETF (AMEX: TFI) lower: just 0.20%. TFI was seeded with just $20 million.

The funds differ in important ways, as explored in-depth on IndexUniverse.com by Rudy Aguilera here and here.

More muni bond funds from PowerShares and Van Eck Global are in the works.

Now, the only question is: Will investors buy these funds?

The prospectus for MUB is available here.

The prospectus for TFI is available here.

NEW LISTINGS

China Real Estate

China is hot. And international real estate is hot. Put them together and you have a fund that could attract a fair bit of attention.

A new filing hit the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week for just such a fund. The Claymore/Alphashares China Real Estate ETF will invest in Chinese companies that derive the bulk of their revenues from real estate development and property management in China, Hong Kong and Macau. The fund will hold both ADRs and local shares (Hong Kong H Shares and China B and N shares). The underlying index is a free-float adjusted modified market cap index, with a 5% cap on component weights. It has a minimum market cap requirement of $250 million.

There is no word yet on listing site or expense ratio.

The prospectus is available here.

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