Opportunities In Alternative Energy, Infrastructure

Intrepid MarketWatch reporter John Spence has an interesting report investigating which ETFs stand to benefit from a new political environment in Washington, D.C. 

Prime on those lists are infrastructure and alternative energy plays. One of the commentators is our own Matt Hougan. 

You can read the story here.

More Advisors Turning To Indexing

Another part of the WSJ 's package this week on fund investing talks to several portfolio managers and advisors who are switching from actively managed mutual funds to index-based portfolios.

Toward the end of Karen Hube's story is the contrarian view that active managers might actually work better in these sorts of rocky times.

You can read the story here.

ETF Deathwatch In '09

Tom Petruno of the Los Angeles Times  notes that about 60 exchange-traded funds were closed in 2008, a big increase from past years. The article says that only five ETFs were shuttered from 2003–2007.

He talks to Ron Rowland, who serves as chief investment officer at Capital Cities Asset Management. He also publishes newsletters advocating momentum-based trading strategies using stocks, ETFs and other types of funds. In any case, he has formulated his own ETF Deathwatch List, which enters 2009 with 97 ETFs and 42 exchange-traded notes included.

His list is calculated based on average daily volumes, among other factors. You can read the story here. 

Energy ETFs Rebounding

This article in Barron's by Michael Kahn takes a look at ETFs such as the Sector Select SPDR Energy ETF (NYSEArca: XLE) and the Market Vectors-Coal ETF (NYSEArca: KOL), which are starting to attract more assets and look better to technical analysts.

You can read the story here.