New products introduced over the last week include a new SPDR ETF from State Street Global Advisors and new ETFs from Russell Investments.
In addition, Interbank FX has launched a new social trading platform, and Smartleaf added a model vendor portal to its model distribution service.
Here are the latest developments of interest to advisors:
1) State Street Global Advisors Launches Short Term High Yield Bond SPDR ETF
State Street Global Advisors, the asset management business of State Street Corporation, announced Thursday that trading began on the SPDR Barclays Capital Short Term High Yield Bond ETF (SJNK). The new ETF offers investors access to high-yield corporate bonds with short durations, and has an annual expense ratio is 0.40%.
SJNK seeks to track the performance of the Barclays Capital 0-5 Cash Pay Constrained High Yield Index, which includes publicly issued U.S. dollar-denominated, non-investment-grade, fixed-rate, taxable corporate bonds that have a remaining maturity of less than 5 years, are rated high yield (Ba1/BB+/BB+ or below) using the middle rating of Moody’s Investors Service Inc., Fitch, Inc., or Standard & Poor’s Inc., and have $350 million or more of issuance. As of March 5, 2012, there were approximately 351 securities in the Index with an average modified adjusted duration of approximately 2.06 years.
2) New Russell ETFs Offer High Dividend Yield Exposure
Global asset manager Russell Investments on Thursday launched two high dividend yield ETFs. The Russell High Dividend Yield ETF (HDIV) and Russell Small Cap High Dividend Yield ETF (DIVS) seek to track the market capitalization-weighted Russell U.S. Large Cap High Dividend Yield and Russell U.S. Small Cap High Dividend Yield Indexes, respectively.