ETF NEWS: A MAY EXPLOSION

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By seadmin

There was a plethora of new exchange-traded fund offerings released in May. Many of these offerings might be a bit intimidating to many investors. One of my main goals is to break these new offerings down into simple, bite-sized pieces for you to digest easily.

The first noteworthy new funds to break into the marketplace last month were five new real estate ETFs from the iShares family. Higher interest rates are not slowing the advance of new real estate funds that take advantage of commercial, residential, retail, and mortgage REITs.

For more on these new real estate ETF offerings from iShares, click here.

Many people are wondering when the first actively managed exchange-traded fund will make its debut. Well, the folks over at First Trust brought us one step closer this month by releasing 16 new sector ETFs that are based on indexes known as AlphaDEX.

These AlphaDEX funds employ a strategy where stocks need to meet certain criteria to remain in a given AlphaDEX index. The indexes are re-balanced quarterly, based on several different growth and valuation factors that screen stocks for continued inclusion within the composite.

For more on these new AlphaDEX ETFs, go here.

Turning now to the international front, May brought us many intriguing new funds designed to give investors unique exposure to specific countries and industries. A new fund from the Van Eck family is the Market Vectors Global Alternative Energy (GEX) fund.

GEX gives investors direct access to a number of the world’s leading alternative energy stocks. Not to be outdone in the global arena, we also saw Claymore Securities launch the first Global Water Index Fund (CGW). I often talk about liquidity when investing in ETFs and this fund got off to an amazing start in the first two weeks of the month with an average daily trading volume of more than 300,000 shares.

Finally, a new entrant into the red-hot overseas markets is the First Trust Chindia Index (FNI). This fund offers returns of the 25 most liquid ADRs from China, as well as India.

I have only begun to scratch the surface of the many ETF offerings issued in May. If you want to find out more about the latest ETF news, please go to this Web site that I highly recommend.

There is simply no better ETF news site on the Web.

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