ETF UPDATE — SHAKING THE WISDOM TREE

You all know what a big proponent I am of ETFs. So when a company comes along with a new twist on these offerings, I want to share the news with you. The new fund company jumping into the ETF game is WisdomTree, and this year they are introducing 20 new dividend-oriented ETFs that could be quite interesting for investors.

The unique thing about the WisdomTree ETFs is that they will focus on "fundamentally weighted" indexes in contrast to market-cap weighted indexes. The weighting of WisdomTree ETFs will be determined by either the amount of cash dividends that companies in each index pay, or the dividend yield of the companies in each index.

Although WisdomTree is a new company, its principal players are by no means Wall Street novices. Hedge fund luminary Michael Steinhardt is one of the initial investors who supplied WisdomTree with $9 million in seed money, and their CEO is Jonathan Steinberg (son of Saul Steinberg, and married to CNBC "money honey" Maria Bartiromo). The WisdomTree team also includes Jeremy Siegel, finance professor from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, and Bruce Lavine, who helped introduce ETFs to industry leader Barclays.

In a recent conference call introducing these funds, Steinberg said, "We’ve created a unique approach that could move the indexing industry in a new direction and has the potential to change the way people think about indexing and investing."

Hey, I’m all for innovation in this industry, and new ETFs with a twist could just be what the doctor ordered for investors out there whose primary goal is achieving solid monthly dividends. We’ll be monitoring these funds closely over the next few weeks and months to determine if they are appropriate for any one of our advisory services.

Here is a listing of the new WisdomTree funds:

WisdomTree Dividend Top 100 Fund
WisdomTree LargeCap Dividend Fund
WisdomTree MidCap Dividend Fund
WisdomTree High-Yielding Equity Fund
WisdomTree SmallCap Dividend Fund
WisdomTree Pacific ex-Japan Dividend Fund
WisdomTree Pacific ex-Japan High-Yielding Equity Fund
WisdomTree Japan Total Dividend Fund
WisdomTree Japan High-Yielding Equity Fund
WisdomTree DIEFA Fund
WisdomTree International LargeCap Dividend Fund
WisdomTree International Dividend Top 100 Fund
WisdomTree International MidCap Dividend Fund
WisdomTree DIEFA High-Yielding Dividend Fund
WisdomTree International SmallCap Dividend Fund
WisdomTree Europe Total Dividend Fund
WisdomTree Europe High-Yielding Equity Fund
WisdomTree Europe SmallCap Dividend Fund
WisdomTree Japan SmallCap Dividend Fund
WisdomTree Total Dividend Fund