ETF NEWS — 02/15/2006
On Monday we saw the rollout of three new Exchange Traded Funds from the company that started it all, State Street Global Advisors. The new funds are designed to track three of this market’s most talked about sectors: biotechnology, homebuilders, and semiconductor stocks.
State Street Global Advisors said that these sector SPDRs—short for Standard & Poor’s Depository Receipts and commonly known as "spiders"—will have the following ticker symbols: Biotech SPDR (XBI), Homebuilders SPDR (XHB) and Semiconductor SPDR (XSD).
These three new ETFs will track the performance of specific industries and are benchmarked against the Standard & Poor’s Select Industry Indices. Each index is constructed with an equal-weighted methodology and is rebalanced quarterly in order to prevent a few select stocks from dominating the performance of the index. The expense ratio for each ETF is 35 basis points.
Jim Woods is a 30-plus-year veteran of the markets with varied experience as a broker, hedge fund trader, financial writer, author and newsletter editor.
His books include co-authoring, “Billion Dollar Green: Profit from the Eco Revolution,” and “The Wealth Shield: How to Invest and Protect Your Money from Another Stock Market Crash, Financial Crisis or Global Economic Collapse.” He’s also ghostwritten many books and articles, as well as edited content for some of the investment industry’s biggest luminaries. Read more about Jim Woods.
