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ProShares Expands Foreign Leverage With New ETFs
June 04, 2009 4:52 am
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If you think international markets are on the verge of a new leg up in the ongoing broad global rally, a few more tools via exchange-traded funds are now available to provide more leverage. ProShares launched on Wednesday four ETFs taking 200% positions in four popular foreign indexes. Two are broad in geographic reach and each adds to existing ProShares ETFs that take inverse positions with the same benchmarks. The new ProShares are the:
These ETFs each seek to capture 2 times the daily performance of their underlying benchmarks. That's something to consider since rival Direxion recently moved to introduce a series of leveraged ETFs that track monthly index performances. (See related article here.) In theory, being able to track a longer return period should make the new Direxion ETFs better-suited for longer investing periods. That assumes, of course, investors hold the proposed ETFs at the beginning—rather than later—in any given month. Two of the proposed Direxion leveraged ETFs tracking monthly performance would follow the same indexes as the new EFO and EET. But leverage on a monthly performance basis has yet to come out. In the meantime, ProShares clearly has first-mover status in the international inverse ETF marketplace. Rydex still doesn't have any ETFs that leverage foreign markets. Direxion has two such funds, the Daily Developed Markets Bull 3x Shares ETF (NYSE: DZK) and the Daily Emerging Markets Bull 3x Shares ETF (NYSE: EDC). As their names imply, each ETF aims at 300% of the daily returns of their respective MSCI benchmarks. The other ways to use leverage now available overseas is all through ProShares ETFs at the moment. But stay tuned ...
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