NEW FILINGS

Northern Trust To Deliver The World

Northern Trust has made its long-anticipated move into the ETF marketplace, and it is attacking the space with vigor.

The Chicago-based banking giant has filed a prospectus for 27 new ETFs offering focused exposure to a wide range of international and global markets. The filing includes twenty country-specific funds, four international REIT funds and three global funds.

The funds will be branded as “NETS.” There is no word yet on listing sites or expense ratios.

There are a number of gems in the filing, but by far the most exciting is the NETS Dow Jones Wilshire Global Total Market ETF. This fund, along with the complementary NETS FTSE CNBC Global 300 ETF, will be the first global ETFs to combine U.S., international developed and emerging markets exposure into a single ETF.

Also of particular interest are the China and Hong Kong funds, which are the first to track the popular Hang Seng indexes, the most popular in Asia. Meanwhile, the Russia , Greece, Israel and Portugal ETFs will be the first covering those domestic markets. (Van Eck offers a Russian ETF under its Market Vectors brand, but that fund holds American Depository Receipts.)

Altogether, this filing heralds the arrival of a major new player on the ETF scene. Let the competition begin.

The prospectus is available here.
Full coverage and analysis is available from IndexUniverse.com here.

WisdomTree Turns To India

WisdomTree continued its recent run of filing for interesting new funds with its new prospectus for the WisdomTree India Earnings Index ETF, which captures the performance of “profitable companies incorporated and traded in India.” Stocks are weighted by earnings, and must have at least $200 million in market cap to qualify. There is no word yet on listing site or exchange.

Currently, the only way to tap directly into the domestic India stock market is through the iPath MSCI India ETN (INP); other ETFs trading or filed all track ADRs. The WisdomTree ETF, in contrast, will focus on domestic Indian equities.

WisdomTree also has a dividend-focused India ETF in registration.

The prospectus is available here.

PowerShares Balanced Funds

PowerShares filed papers for three novel balanced ETFs of ETFs that combine equity and fixed-income positions to target a given risk level. Each fund holds a portfolio of PowerShares ETFs that target a given risk balance.

The PowerShares Autonomic Growth NFA Global Asset Portfolio holds a 90% position in U.S. and international equity ETFs, along with a 10% position in fixed-income ETFs. The holdings are rebalanced back to this 90/10 risk budget quarterly.

The PowerShares Autonomic Balanced Growth NFA Global Asset Portfolio does the same, but targets a 75%/25% risk budget.

The PowerShares Autonomic Balanced NFA Global Asset Portfolio does the same with a 60/40 equity/fixed income balance.

In addition to the equity and fixed income positions, the funds all hold 0.5% positions in both oil and gold, via the PowerShares DB Oil and PowerShares DB Gold ETFs. Interestingly, at the time of filing, the underlying indexes were heavily concentrated overseas; the most Autonomic Growth index had a 48% position in international stocks and just a 38% position in U.S. stocks, with the remainder in bonds and commodities.

The prospectus is available here.

ETF Data Watch
Note: These numbers refer only to U.S. ETFs. Data as of November 2, 2007, from the American Stock Exchange.
Pure Numbers
Total number of ETFs and ETNs listed in the U.S.: 622
Total number of ETFs and ETNs in registration: 458
Total Assets: $590 billion

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