Harry Markowitz’s 56-year-old portfolio-optimization theory may be middle aged, but it’s forever young in the service of tackling the investment challenge du jour.
An intriguing example comes from a custom indexing shop in the San Francisco area, a region that’s no stranger to finding inspiration in the finance literature for minting investment strategies. The Bay Area in the 1970s was host to the original index fund and the first disciplined use of tactical asset allocation in a quantitative framework. The same spirit of academically motivated innovation...
The pace of growth?both in assets and sheer number of funds?in the ETF industry over the past several years has been truly remarkable. According to the Investment Company Institute, from 2002 through the end of 2007, fund sponsors launched nearly 420 new products, and assets under management more than quadrupled, to $420 billion.
While many of the new funds were mainstream offerings based on...
Holy fund closings. We've had the odd shuttering of a fund in the past but there went 11. Matt Hougan has written a nice little article on it, and he talked to Christian Magoon about it. Could this be the opening of the gate for many future similar closings? Goodness knows traditional funds have been doing it in large numbers for many years (hence the dreaded survivorship bias in many fund studies). Funds are often incubated and then merged or shuttered depending on their asset and returns performance.
In a surprising move, Claymore Securities announced Friday that it would liquidate 11 of its least-popular ETFs.
The last day of trading for the funds will be February 19. On February 28, shareholders of record will receive cash payments for the full value of the funds. Any capital gains or losses from the portfolio will be distributed as well.
Index Universe assistant editor Heather Bell chatted with KLD's Peter Kinder and Thomas Kuh, Ph.D., shortly before the launch of KLD's latest index, about the firm's new global sustainability index, the evolution of socially responsible investing [SRI] and changing attitudes toward SRI.
Kinder is the president of Boston-based KLD Research & Analytics Inc. [KLD], which he co-founded in 1988. He was also one of the co-founders of Domini Social Investments LLC and was a principal there from 1997 to 2000.
Tom Lydon (ETF Trends) submits: Ethically-minded investors have more options as ETFs cross over into the wealth-building, world improving categories. During the past few years, around a dozen ETFs with a socially responsible focus have debuted in the market, reports G. Jeffery MacDonald of The Christian Science Monitor. For instance, two launched in June: PowerShares Global Clean Energy Portfolio (PBD) and the Claymore/KLD Sudan Free Large Cap Core (KSF).
Chad Brand submits: I had a telephone conversation last week with a new client and one of the questions he had for me was, "Do you invest in unethical companies?"
He was speaking about Wal-Mart (WMT) specifically, it turns out, but there are a lot of investors who avoid buying shares in companies where they disapprove of their products, their way of doing business, or both. Common examples include stocks with ties to alcohol, tobacco, firearms, casinos, Mideast oil, etc. It was a good...
IndexUniverse submits: Claymore Securities launched two new exchange-traded funds on the American Stock Exchange on Monday, June 25: the Claymore BBD/High Income ETF Index Fund (AMEX: LVL) and Claymore/KLD Sudan-Free Large-Cap Core ETF (AMEX: KSF). These new funds bring Claymore?s total ETF product lineup to 23 ETFs.
The Claymore/KLD Sudan-Free Large-Cap Core fund is the first socially responsible ETF tied to a Sudan-free mandate.
Tom Lydon (ETF Trends) submits: Claymore Securities launched another ETF on Monday. The Claymore/BBD High Income Index ETF (LVL) tracks the Benchmarks By Design Index that uses multi-factor proprietary selection rules to identify the securities.
They are chosen across all asset classes and include those that offer the greatest potential from an income and risk/return perspective, as the press release states. This ETF is highly liquid, income-oriented and comprises 110-150 securities selected by a proprietary measure.
David Neubert submits: Claymore Securities launched the Claymore/KLD Sudan Free Large-Cap Core ETF (KSF) ($25.00) yesterday. The Claymore/KLD Sudan Free Large-Cap Core ETF tracks the KLD Large Cap Sudan Free SocialSM Index, which, according the KLD/Claymore press release, is the first socially responsible index tied to the issue of Sudan divestment.
I do not own KSF. As of this moment, the fund hasn't even traded yet. I wouldn't expect this fund to be very liquid. I could not find...
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