• Page 1: New ETF listings and new ETFs in registration
• Page 2: ETF industry statistics – with new top and bottom performer statistics.
• Page 3: The complete list of ETFs (and ETNs) in registration

Note: Want to receive an email notice as soon as ETF Watch is posted, Just click here to subscribe.

NEW LISTINGS

Focus On This: New ETF Company Debuts

A new exchange-traded fund (ETF) company debuted on Friday, as FocusShares LLC listed four new ETFs on the NYSE Arca platform. The new funds are all tied to indexes from the options-focused International Securities Exchange (ISE), and represent one way that exchange is looking to capitalize on its indexing research efforts.
The new funds are:

• FocusShares ISE Homebuilders Index Fund (NYSE: SAW): Companies focused on the residential home construction and prefabricated housing market.
• FocusShares ISE SINdex Fund (NYSE: PUF): Buys companies involved in casinos, liquor and cigarettes.
• FocusShares ISE-CCM Homeland Security Index Fund (NYSE: MYP): Holds companies that have contracted work with the Department of Homeland Security, such as bio-vaccine outfits.
• FocusShares ISE-REVERE Wal-Mart Supplier Index Fund (NYSE: WSI): Holds companies that derive a large portion of their revenues from sales to Wal-Mart.

The funds are, as the company's name suggests, focused, holding just 20 and 30 companies each. That's a growing trend in the ETF industry, as more narrowly focused funds pop up aiming to hone in on very specific investment themes.
The homebuilders fund charges 0.35% in expenses, while the other funds charge 0.60%. The SINdex is an equally weighted fund, while the other ETFs follow a modified market-cap structure.

Read full coverage from IndexUniverse.com here.

The prospectus is available here.

SSgA Gets Junky

State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) launched a high-yield bond exchange-traded fund (ETF) on Tuesday, December 3, becoming the third company to issue a high-yield bond ETF in the past twelve months. The SPDR Lehman High Yield Bond ETF will trade on the American Stock Exchange under the cute ticker symbol “JNK.”

The new fund will go head-to-head with the PowerShares High Yield Corporate Bond Portfolio (AMEX: PHB) and the iShares iBOXX $ High Yield Corporate Bond Fund (AMEX: HYG). PHB launched on November 15, and HYG launched on April 4. So far, PHB has the lead on assets, with $200 million, while PHB holds just $2.5 million. JNK was seeding with about $9.5 million in assets.
JNK will offer the lowest expense ratio of the three funds, at 0.40%, compared to 0.50% for its competitors. One other important difference is the creation/redemption mechanism: HYG and PHB use an “in-kind” creation methodology, whereby institutional investors must deliver the underlying portfolio of junk bonds to the fund to create new shares of the ETF; by contrast, JNK uses a cash creation process, whereby institutional investors deliver cash to SSgA and SSgA goes out and buys the right bonds. SSgA claims that its process will be more efficient, as it has the breadth and scope to purchase these bonds at low cost.

The prospectus is available here.

Previous Page

1  |  2  |  3

Next Page