My inner geek has a couple of big things today. First Jack Bauer, Chloe and the gang from 24 are back tonight. I look forward to the show and Adam Warner's expert analysis of each episode.My inner geek is agog over this post from Matt Hougan with all of the ETFs that are in registration. It is the motherlode for this sort of thing.
I am most interested in the State Shares Missouri 50 and the HealthShares GI/Gender Health. Those are not made up funds but I am kidding about being interested.
If you look though the listings I think you might draw the same conclusion that I a drew awhile back and have been repeating over and over which is most of these will be useless but a few here and there that will hold some promise. Up above I made fun of the Gender fund. That same company (the former Ferghana Wellspring) has one in its list called European Drug. Well drug companies are a great way to access Europe. This fund could turn out to be better than iShares Global Health (IXJ) or WisdomTree International Health (DBR), both of which show up in a few accounts I manage. I don't know if it will be better, I don't know anything about the fund yet but in scanning the list it sticks out.
The flood of ETFs is nowhere near the bugaboo that some folks cite. Many of them will live in obscurity with less than $50 million and will never wag the dog. It is also unlikely that any of them leave so many confused and disgruntled shareholders as USO appears to be doing. One thing that seems be true is that very few ETFs are perceived as "not working." There may be some that lag but here I am differentiating between lagging and malfunctioning.
I write over and over about not believing in all ETF portfolios as being the best way to go. While ETFs allow us to do things we could not do before, nothing so far is changing my mind on this point. This coming June I will be a
One last point, as you look through the listings in Matt's post you will see a lot of funds that have some degree of active management. Some of them, by the nature of what they screen for, can capture a certain effect, like the Patent ETF (OTP) possibly being a proxy for large cap growth. But these funds can also be problematic too. Too many of these and you may end up with a bigger bias to growth or large cap or something else. I'm not too excited about these like I was with water, agriculture, currency and a couple others.
Did you see that hit on Reggie Bush early on last night, holy cow.
Amusing anecdote; blogger finally told me I was ready to switch to the new version but then denied me early on in the process. When ever it does convert I will start using tags to make searching easier. I will also tag old posts but that will take a while as there are almost 2100 of them.
5 comments:
Roger,
Well, I guess you should tell all your readers that you've finally made the BIG TIME. I saw your brief interview in the Business section of the Prescott Daily Courier this morning (Can a WSJ interview be far behind??). Many people have been talking up the Healthcare sector for 2007. Do you have a favorite ETF or Fund in the Healthcare area? Some of them are heavy into big Pharma while others seem to tilt toward the service providers. What are your thoughts here? It's too cold in Prescott this morning (3 degrees at my house at 6AM) to do much outdoors so it's a good time to sit at the computer.
The Courier; funny. I have been in the WSJ online many times, and interviewed by them quite a bit for the hard copy but I don't think quoted. I was also in a trading shots piece with Michael Panzner about derivatives last spring.
I disclose in this post that IXJ and DBR are in some accounts but I really prefer individual stocks where possible for client accounts.
I saw 9 degrees at about 6:45. I think it might be a better day for some football but like every Sunday I do have a fair bit of work to do.
Roger, would you feel comfortable saying a bit more on the conference in June, like how to get info, dates, place, cost of admission and so forth, in case some of us might like to go?
For now all I know is June 14-15 at the NY Helmsley which I assume is the Helmsley building at 230 (or is it 231) Park, the same building where Kaupthing Bank (personal holding)has its US office and where Barry Ritholtz' office used to be.
I don't know cost, I don't even know if it is open to the public. But ready or not I'm on Friday at 9:15, gulp.
Roger, since you do not like all-ETF portfolios, what's your opinion of holding only mutual funds? Is it essentially the same beast?
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