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February 13, 2012 at 04:52 AM
New products introduced over the last week include a new permanent ETF from Global X and a report by BlackRock that shows fixed-income ETFs have hit record levels. In addition, Van Eck Global announced that its suite of municipal bond funds recently passed the $1 billion mark.
Here are the latest developments of interest to advisors:
1) Global X Funds Launches Permanent ETF to Diversify Across Asset Classes
On Wednesday, Global X Funds launched the Global X Permanent ETF (PERM), a diversified ETF investing across various asset classes and designed to perform in different economic environments: increasing growth, decreasing growth rate, increasing inflation, decreasing inflation. PERM seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Solactive Permanent Index.
PERM is an all-seasons portfolio tracking the performance of four asset class categories designed to perform differently across various economic climates. The fund has target allocations of 25% to equity stocks, 25% to short-term bonds, 20% to gold and 5% to silver, and 25% to-long term bonds. PERM does not try to beat an index, but rather maintains target allocations through passive indexing.
2) Fixed-Income ETFs Hit Record Levels Globally, BlackRock Reports
Global asset flows for exchange-traded products (ETPs), and fixed-income ETFs specifically, hit record levels during the month of January, illustrating a continuing market “revolution” globally as investors increasingly turn to fixed-income ETFs in an effort to help restore investment yield to their portfolios.
According to the BlackRock Investment Institute’s latest “ETP Landscape” report released Wednesday, the global ETP industry had its best month of January ever with $34.1 billion of net inflows, representing a 144% increase in inflows over the previous record set in January 2011 and up 116% from December 2011. Also, according to the report, fixed-income ETFs set a new global monthly record, attracting $9.0 billion in January 2012 up from the previous monthly record set of $6.7 billion set in January 2009.
iShares plans to continue to expand its fixed-income product offerings later this month when it is scheduled to launch six new fixed-income ETFs in the U.S., including the iShares Barclays U.S. Treasury Bond Fund (GOVT), the iShares Barclays CMBS Bond Fund (CMBS), the iShares Aaa – A Rated Corporate Bond Fund (QLTA), and three corporate sector bond funds (MONY, ENGN and AMPS).
3) Market Vectors Municipal Bond ETFs Top $1 Billion in AUM
