All posts by MarketsMuse Staff Reporter

ETF News, Fixed Income

Investors Use of Corporate Bond ETFs On The Rise

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MarketsMuse.com blog update courtesy of press release from Tabb Group and profiles new research report focused on institutional investors’ growing use of corporate bond ETFs.

NEW YORK & LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–In new research examining accelerating growth in the corporate bond exchange-traded fund (ETF) market, which has seen assets under management (AuM) rise more than $90 billion from 2009 to 2014, a nine-fold increase in aggregate and an annual 42% compound growth rate, TABB Group says bond ETFs can help institutional investors manage investment flows, enhance returns and limit transaction costs in the current liquidity environment.

“This is a way to achieve market beta while the single-name search process carries on.”

Regulatory burdens of the Volcker Rule, Basel III and the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) have handicapped large banks and altered their secondary market-making businesses, forcing them to change the manner in which they provide liquidity to investors, wreaking havoc on the process of building and expanding portfolios. Institutional investors navigating this new landscape need to leverage every tool available, say Anthony Perrotta, a TABB principal, head of fixed income research and research analyst Colby Jenkins, co-authors of “Bond Market Entropy: Bringing Order to the Cash Bond Crisis,” which is why they have been embracing the corporate bond market.

“Bid/ask spreads for large bond ETFs are substantially more stable than their underlying cash bonds,” says Perrotta. They’re also being used as a means of exchanging credit risk during times of stress in the underlying market.”

According to Jenkins, “A 5-10% liquidity sleeve in corporate bond ETFs that tracks to a diversified portfolio of bonds is becoming a popular tool among asset managers to efficiently manage their investment flows.” In the past two years, he says, large single-name portfolio managers have begun utilizing ETFs as a means to smooth out their exposure during redemption periods. Alternatively, they are using ETFs to gain interim exposure to the market when receiving an investment inflow from a client such as a pension fund, insurance company or other long-term oriented investor. Instead of waiting some elongated period of time to find the appropriate cash bonds, they turn to ETF shares that correspond to their core portfolio. “This is a way to achieve market beta while the single-name search process carries on.”

Although 60% of the corporate bond notional trading activity in the second half of 2014 took place in just 8% of the CUSIPs traded, there are more than 260 bond ETFs available to investors today, up from 62 in 2008, a 326% increase. And despite regulatory approval and entrenched pre-ETF investment mandates being the two greatest barriers currently to institutional corporate bond ETF adoption, “a larger pool of National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) credit-rated bond ETFs that have unique economic advantages over non-rated bond ETFs, such as more lenient risk-based capital requirements, will be a key stepping stone to the next threshold of institutional adoption,” Perrotta says.

Continue reading →

ETF News, Fixed Income

New Rules: SEC Set to Level Playing Field for ETF Issuers

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Are you beginning to wonder why there is an avalanche of news stories profiling corporate bond ETFs? As we’ve posted here at MarketsMuse.com, one good reason might be rising concerns that when interest rates tick up and bond prices tick down, there could be a rush to the exits on the part of investment managers seeking to sell their corporate bond ETFs (or looking to sell select ETFs so as to hedge portfolio exposure in underlying issues held by these managers). Reuters’ Jessica Toonkel and Ashley Lau touch on that topic in recent story profiling a plan on the part of the SEC to “level the playing field” for newer firms entering the ETF Issuer club.

Here’s the extract:

By Jessica Toonkel and Ashley Lau

Reuters – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may strip Vanguard Group, BlackRock Inc and State Street Corp, the oldest and biggest providers of exchange-traded funds, of an advantage they hold over newer rivals in how they assemble the shares of their funds, said sources familiar with the SEC.

etf-issuer-sec-level-playing-fieldsBut BlackRock, Vanguard and a few others, who were among the first to apply with the SEC to create ETFs, are allowed greater leeway: if they need a difficult-to-find security to create shares of their funds, they are permitted to use a similar security – not necessarily the same one – in the fund. This greater flexibility makes it easier and cheaper to run the older funds, and harder for newer entrants into the market such as Northern Trust, Van Eck Global and Charles Schwab Corp to compete.

The agency’s tentative plan – still in its early stages – would affect how companies manage their portfolios in illiquid markets, such as bonds. It may result in allowing the likes of Schwab to compete better with their older rivals, as well as manage their existing bond products at a lower cost.

The agency’s tentative plan – still in its early stages – would affect how companies manage their portfolios in illiquid markets, such as bonds. It may result in allowing the likes of Schwab to compete better with their older rivals, as well as manage their existing bond products at a lower cost.

For the full story from Reuters’ Jessica Toonkel and Ashley Lau, please click here

ETF News, People Profiles

How One Smart Prop Shop is Trading Oil ETFs

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MarketsMuse blog update courtesy of extract from 27 Feb story from ETF.com’s Elisabeth Kashner and her profile of prop trading firm Virtu, the high-frequency (HFT)“Virtu’s HFT Way To Play Crazy Oil Market”

 

Elisabeth Kashner, ETF.com
Elisabeth Kashner, ETF.com

Would you ever sell something to yourself and pay someone else to be the middleman? Nobody’s that dumb, right?

Virtu, the high-frequency trading firm (HFT) of the type profiled in “Flash Boys,” did just that, to the tune of $32 million.

High-frequency traders are perhaps the most sophisticated players on Wall Street. Some might be scoundrels, but they’re not fools. That’s why their recent trades in oil futures-based ETFs are so fascinating.

Like hedge funds and mutual funds, HFT firms keep their portfolios under wraps, except when the Securities and Exchange Commission requires disclosure.

Virtu’s most recent form 13F, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s quarterly holdings report, revealed a $46 million position in United States Oil (USO | B-100) at the close of business on Dec. 31, 2014. USO buys front-month oil futures. By the end of 2014, with oil prices at a 10-year low, USO shares had taken a beating, as you can see in the chart below.   Continue reading →

ETF News, Fixed Income

Corporate Bond ETFs and Liquidity: A Looming Black Swan or Extended Contango?

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MarketsMuse update inspired by yesterday’s column by Tom Lydon/ETFtrends.com and smacks at the heart of what certain “bomb throwers” believe could be a Black Swan event, albeit an event that may not be driven by a global crisis or surprise economic event. The event in question will, in theory, take place when interest rates start ticking up (and underlying corporate bond prices tick down) and institutional bond fund managers find themselves trying to figure out whether to simply suffer from mark-downs (and performance) or to continue collecting coupons until the issues they hold mature.

MM Editor Note: Since most folks know that bond managers are akin to lemmings (no disrespect intended!) and typically follow each other like blind mice, given the massive size of the corporate market place, a potential avalanche could take place when everyone runs for the exit if rates tick up and simultaneously, the economy starts to slow. Wall Street dealers are certainly not going to be available to catch those falling knives, simply because new regulations have put a crimp in the capital they can commit to warehousing positions. Worse still, its easy to envision one very long contango event, where the cash ETF trades at a discount to the value of the underlying bonds, simply because one won’t be able to sell those underlying bonds in any type of material size.

Here’s an opening extract from Tom Lydon’s piece “Liquidity Concerns In Corporate Bond ETFs”: Continue reading →

ETF News

Leveraged ETFs Chapter 12: Levered and Lightly Levered: Which Direxion To Choose?

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MarketsMuse update courtesy of extract from Olly Ludwig’s ETF.com profile of Direxion Shares’ latest levered product. Continuing in the direction of embracing RIAs, Direxion is hoping the latest incarnation will further innovate and provide investment advisors with a new tool. Here’s the opening from ETF.com’s profile….

ETF_OllyLudwig100x100
Olly Ludwig, ETF.com

Just when you thought that the leveraged ETF niche has been carved out and accounted for, New York-based Direxion Shares has come out with what it calls “lightly levered” ETFs that have 1.25X exposure.

To hear Direxion President Brian Jacobs speak to this new ripple in the world of leveraged ETFs, the company aims to give investors a more easily managed investment tool than the 2X and 3X ETFs that have ruled the leveraged roost so far. But, no less, Jacobs told ETF.com that Direxion is looking to reinvent the leveraged ETF for an advisory channel increasingly focused on asset allocation in portfolio construction.

For the full story from ETF.com, please click here

 

ETF News

Cancer Treatment ETF Surges In Past Few Days

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MarketMuse update courtesy of extract from Todd Shriber’s latest piece at ETFTrends. 

ETFTrends-logoShares of Pharmacyclics (NasdaqGS: PCYC), a maker of cancer treatments, surged nearly 17% Wednesday, extending a run that has seen the stock surge 80.1% this year, on news that the California-based company is mulling a sale.

Citing unidentified sources, Bloombergreports that Dow component Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ)and Swiss pharma giant Novartis (NYSE: NVS) could be among the suitors for Pharmacyclics. Multiple suitors for the company could prove to be a boon for the First Trust NYSE Arca Biotechnology Index Fund (NYSEArca: FBT), one of a scant number of exchange traded funds that have decent exposure toPharmacyclics.

Shares of FBT climbed 1.9% Wednesday on volume that was more than 25% above the three-month trailing average thanks in part to the ETF’s nearly 4.1% weight to Pharmacyclics. The stock was FBT’s third-largest holding as of Feb. 24, helping the ETF join 24 other healthcare funds among the 195 ETFs that hit all-time highs yesterday.

Where things get interesting for Pharmacyclics, and as a result, FBT, is how much of a premium a suitor will pay. Pharmacyclics closed Wednesday with a market value of $16.6 billion. Sources told Bloomberg the company could fetch $17 billion to $18 billion. The Financial Times reported Pharmacyclics could command $19 billion.

For the entire article from ETFtrends.com, please click here

Global Macro Strategy

Global Macro: Can You Say Eurozone?

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MarketsMuse.com update courtesy of extract from a.m. edition of “Sight Beyond Sight”, one of the most widely-followed industry newsletters courtesy of global macro strategy ‘think tank’ Rareview Macro LLC.

Neil Azous, Rareview Macro
Neil Azous, Rareview Macro

Today is About the Forest…Not a Tree

Market Watchers & Worker Bees
Risk Takers
L/S Hedge Funds (Dumb Money) vs. Long Only Funds & Retail (Smart Money)
Model Portfolio Update – February 20, 2015 COB:  -0.76% WTD, -0.32% MTD, -1.19% YTD

We return from our vacation re-energized and looking to provoke some strong emotions among the professional investment community.

If you are a long/short equity hedge fund this edition is going to bother you a lot. Why? Because you are NOT long European risk assets.

If you are a long-only equity manager this edition is going to make you even more confident. Why? Because you are long European risk assets. Continue reading →

ETF News

China ETFs Seeming More Like The Year Of The Bear

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MarketMuse update courtesy of ETFTrends’ Todd Shriber looking at China related ETFs. 

In the Chinese zodiac, 2015 is the year of the goat, but a popular exchange traded fund tracking China’s onshore equities is getting bearish treatment.

The Deutsche X-trackers Harvest CSI 300 China A-Shares ETF (NYSEArca: ASHR), the largest U.S-listed A-shares ETF, had 6.3% of its shares outstanding sold short as of Feb. 23, reports Belinda Cao forBloomberg.

ASHR surged 51.3% last year, making it one of 2014’s best-performing non-leveraged ETFs. That performance was better than quadruple the showing by the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (NYSEArca: FXI), the largest U.S.-listed China ETF. However, the 2014 A-shares rally has those stocks looking richly valued relative to their Hong Kong-listed counterparts, encouraging traders to up bearish bets on ASHR.

“The number of shares borrowed and sold short to profit from a decline in Deutsche Bank’s A-share ETF was 1.8 million on Feb. 23. That’s close to the record of 2.4 million, or 8.2 percent of total shares outstanding, reached Feb. 13,” Bloomberg reports, citing Markit data.

However, another catalyst could be encouraging the increased bearish bets on ASHR. On Jan. 21, Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management (DAWM) was forced to limit creations of new shares in ASHR because increased demand for the ETF was forcing the fund o bump up against their respective Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII), which allows the funds to purchase A-shares equities. 

Creation limits often lead to ETFs, particularly those with exposure to markets that are closed during the U.S. trading day, trading at premiums to net asset value. Professional traders then look to profit from the gap between the ETF’s market price and lower NAV by shorting the ETF. Since the start of 2015, ASHR has traded at a premium to its NAV in 26 days, according to DAWM data.

Although the most recently announced creation limit for ASHR has not yet been lifted, it should be noted the ETF was affected by the same scenario twice in 2014 and DAWM was quick to get ASHR’s RQFII limit increased.

With ASHR’s 2014 surge, some money managers now prefer H-shares to A-shares, but that means they are also missing out on a notable rally in A-shares small-caps.

The Deutsche X-trackers Harvest CSI 500 China A-Shares Small Cap Fund (NYSEArca: ASHS), which was subject to a second creation limit last November, is up 12.1% this year. ASHS tracks the CSI 500 Index of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed small-caps.

The Market Vectors ChinaAMC SME-ChiNext ETF (NYSEArca: CNXT), the younger of the two A-shares small-cap ETFs, has surged 23.7% year-to-date, making it 2015’s top-performing non-leveraged ETF. CNXT, which is heavily allocated to mid-caps, tracks the SME-ChiNext 100 (SZ399611), which provides exposure to the 100 most liquid mid- and small-cap stocks that trade on the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Board and the ChiNext Board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE).

 

Tech Talk

Interest in Buyside-Only Equity Trading Platforms Gains Traction..Again..

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MarketsMuse update courtesy of extract from Pension & Investments Feb 23 edition, with story reported by Sophie Baker …MM Editor Note: The notion of buyside-only electronic trading venues for institutional equities (i.e. block trading) is not a new one. Graybeards who have been around for more than 15 minutes will say “First came Instinet, then there was Optimark….”both were spearheaded by trading pioneer Bill Lupien, and while Instinet quickly became the platform for all to trade NASDAQ stocks, Optimark was determined to be a black box for block trading available to buysiders only…and burned through nearly $100 million before it was sent to the wood chipper. Proving that history repeats itself and that innovation doesn’t need to be an original idea, as Yogi Berra would say “ Its Déjà vu All Over Again.”

The development of buy side-owned equity trading venues has attracted interest from long-term investors.

U.S.-based Luminex Analytics & Trading LLC, set to open for business this year, and Europe-based Plato Partnership Ltd. are being developed against a backdrop of increased pressure on costs, regulatory demand for best execution, recent regulatory investigations into the U.S. dark pools operated by banks, and concerns about some participants in existing dark pools.

“We manage our equity exposure largely internally, and we also do the trading internally,” said Thijs Aaten, managing director, treasury and trading, at APG Asset Management, Amsterdam, Netherlands. The firm has €400 billion ($453.3 billion) in assets under management, including the €344 billion pension fund ABP, Heerlen, Netherlands.

“I’m definitely willing to consider new venues that we can trade on. If there is an advantage to it, then it would be silly not to make use of it. It is our fiduciary duty, and if there is a new opportunity, we have to investigate.”

Luminex is a buy side-to-buy side trading venue owned by a consortium of nine money managers, representing a total of about $15 trillion under management: Fidelity Investments, BlackRock (BLK) Inc. (BLK), Bank of New York Mellon (BK) Corp. (BK), The Capital Group Cos. Inc., Invesco (IVZ) Ltd., J.P. Morgan Asset Management (JPM), MFS Investment Management, State Street Global Advisors and T. Rowe Price Group Inc.

Managers declined to disclose their financial commitments.

Plato’s consortium includes two money managers: Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management and Norges Bank Investment Management, manager of the 6.6 trillion Norwegian kroner ($870 billion) Government Pension Fund Global, Oslo. “We believe we will be naming more firms in coming months,” said Stephen McGoldrick, project director, Plato Partnership, in London.

Both venues were created to give long-only money managers and institutional investors back the power they need to fulfill their best execution requirements, and to ultimately save costs for their clients when trading large blocks of securities.

APG is keen to trade with long-term asset holders, Mr. Aaten said. “(That type of trader,) taking a fundamental but opposite view on the same company, is the cheapest to trade with. But finding that long-term trader is difficult. This is what those new, buy side-to-buy side platforms are about — helping to find those long-term asset owners, (which) will lower our trading costs.”

He said the traditional model, where the sell side acts as a go-between for buyer and seller, and high-frequency traders are admitted, is more expensive. High-frequency traders “don’t have a fundamental view on an equity, but trade on information from the order book. Because of technological advantages they have this information before I do … in our experience, they are the most expensive type of trader to trade against,” Mr. Aaten said.

Self-sustaining

“The consortium’s goal is that Luminex will become self-sustaining, offering its clients a low-cost, fully transparent trading venue for large peer-to-peer block orders, preserving as much alpha as possible for the trading partners’ clients,” said Jeff Estella, director, global equity trading at MFS in Boston.

A BlackRock (BLK) spokesman said company officials believe “alternative trading platforms are invaluable execution tools for investors seeking to avoid information leakage and reduce market impact,” and a spokesman for Fidelity said Luminex “will be focused on helping the investment management community more efficiently source block liquidity.”

Excess cash flow will be reinvested in Luminex, rather than making a profit for the consortium.

Being designed as non-profit-making entities for the members of the consortiums is a key point in the platforms’ favor, said sources.

Plato’s consortium members have goals similar to those for Luminex.

“The consortium’s key aims for this project are to reduce trading costs, simplify market structure and to act as a champion for end investors — a vision which we firmly back,” said Oyvind Schanke, Oslo-based chief investment officer, asset strategies, at NBIM.

Buy side and sell side Plato participants will have equal say on key decisions, and the model was developed with an eye on European regulation, said Mr. McGoldrick.

The intention is to open Luminex to other long-only managers, but there are requirements. This new platform will require a commitment from users of a minimum block size of 5,000 shares or a value of $100,000, whichever is smaller, said a spokesman for Luminex.

Execution guaranteed

Should an order be matched, it is guaranteed to execute. Users also can increase the size of their block trade. Hedge funds that abide by the same rules are permitted on the platform, but not high-frequency traders.

Still, liquidity and the likelihood of finding a match are two issues that hang over the success of Luminex and other buy side-to-buy side platforms.

To continue reading the full story from P&I, please click here.

ETF News, Fixed Income, People Profiles

Bond Guru Gundlach Launches Actively-Traded Bond ETF

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MarketsMuse update profiling the debut of bond guru and DoubleLine Capital’s founder Jeff Gundlach’s first foray into the ETF space is courtesy of ETF.com.The SPDR DoubleLine Total Return Tactical ETF (TOTL) is launching today (Tuesday, Feb. 24).

The $TOTL exchange-traded fund invests in just about every type of debt security, including investment-grade and junk debt—both sovereign and corporate—from issuers around the globe. The portfolio management team is led by none other than Gundlach himself, and will be advised by State Street, according to the prospectus. TOTL costs a net of 55 basis points in expense ratio, or $55 per $10,000 invested.

Gundlach, founder of Los Angeles-based DoubleLine Capital, is one of the most well-known fixed-income investors in the market today, but until now an absent presence in the quickly growing ETF market.

Partnership With SSgA

Last summer, he joined forces with State Street Global Advisors to bring to market an actively managed bond ETF that would go head-to-head with the Pimco Total Return ETF (BOND | B), which at the time was still managed by Bill Gross. Gross has since left Pimco to join Janus.

Replicating BOND’s success will be no small feat, considering that BOND gathered its first $1 billion in assets in less than three months after launch, and grew to become one of the biggest active bond ETFs in the market. BOND’s success was part Gross himself, part a solid track record of outperformance. TOTL has a powerhouse name behind it, but performance only time will tell.  Continue reading →

Fixed Income, Global Macro Strategy

And The Winner of “World’s Fastest Growing Asset Class” Is…

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Below is courtesy of Feb 23 commentary from “Quigley’s Corner”, aka debt capital market observations from Mischler Financial Group’s Head of Fixed Income Syndicate, Ron Quigley. Mischler Financial Group is also an award winner; a panel of industry judges assembled by financial industry publication Wall Street Letter voted to award the firm “WSL 2015 Award for Best Research/BrokerDealer.”

The Big Four Central Banks as the World’s Fastest Growing Asset Class

Ron Quigley, Mischler Financial Group
Ron Quigley, Mischler Financial Group

I had a wonderful conversation over dinner this weekend with a highly intellectual and personable Russian player in our markets.  We discussed Greece and the additional overtime round of “kick-the-can” that postpones pain by four more months.  But what seemed even more compelling was the notion of the Big Four Central Banks as the world’s fastest growing “asset class.”  (The Fed, the ECB, BOJ and PBoC).  Deutsche Bank illustrated in a recent research piece, the staggering numbers of Big Four Central Bank purchases.  The Central Banks have clearly become an asset class all its own.  It’s right up there the with cumulative total of U.S. pension funds!  Digest that for a second readers!  As my friend wrote to me: Continue reading →

Tech Talk

Market Manipulation or Rapid Fire Trading? Regulators Eye Spoofing

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MarketsMuse update courtesy of Feb 21 WSJ story by Bradley Hope

One June morning in 2012, a college dropout whom securities traders call “The Russian” logged on to his computer and began trading Brent-crude futures on a London exchange from his skyscraper office in Chicago.

Over six hours, Igor Oystacher ’s computer sent roughly 23,000 commands, including thousands of buy and sell orders, according to correspondence from the exchange to his clearing firm reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. But he canceled many of those orders milliseconds after placing them, the documents show, in what the exchange alleges was part of a trading practice designed to trick other investors into buying and selling at artificially high or low prices.

Traders call the illegal bluffing tactic “spoofing,” and they say it has long been used to manipulate prices of anything from stocks to bonds to futures. Exchanges and regulators have only recently begun clamping down.

Spoofing is rapid-fire feinting, and employs the weapons of high-frequency trading, aka “HFT”. A spoofer might dupe other traders into thinking oil prices are falling, say, by offering to sell futures contracts at $45.03 a barrel when the market price is $45.05. After other sellers join in with offers at that lower price, the spoofer quickly pivots, canceling his sell order and instead buying at the $45.03 price he set with the fake bid.

The spoofer, who has now bought at two cents under the true market price, can later sell at a higher price—perhaps by spoofing again, pretending to place a buy order at $45.04 but selling instead after tricking rivals to follow. Repeated many times, spoofing can produce big profits. Make no mistake, spoofing is not limited to the fast-paced world of futures contracts; high-frequency traders are notorious for spoofing and anti-spoofing tactics across listed equities, options and other electronic markets.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law outlawed spoofing, but the tactic is still being used to manipulate markets, traders say. “Spoofing is extremely toxic for the markets,” says Benjamin Blander, a managing member of Radix Trading LLC in Chicago. “Anything that distorts the accuracy of prices is stealing money away from the correct allocation of resources.”

For the full story from the WSJ, please click here

ETF News

J.P. Morgan War On Hacking Boosts ETF $ HACK

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MarketMuse update courtesy of Yahoo Finance from ETF Trends. 

Earlier in the week, MarketMuse profiled cyber security ETFs recent boost and today, Brokerdealer.com profiled how J.P. Morgan’s war on cyber security is costing bankers’ jobs, so it only seemed fitting that MarketMuse combine to two subjects for today’s MarketMuse post. Since the threat of cyber security doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon, J.P. Morgan is spending more money on cyber security protection and less money investors’ salaries resulting in the lowest banker hiring rate in recent years and growing cyber security ETFs.   

In what has become an almost daily affair in recent weeks, the PureFunds ISE Cyber Security ETF (HACK) is hitting record highs again Thursday and doing so on strong volume.

HACK, the first exchange traded fund dedicated to the cyber security industry, is up 1% today on volume that is already 36% above the daily average. As has been the case with HACK over its brief trading history (the ETF debuted in November), the catalysts for Thursday upside are easy to identify.

Namely, a Bloomberg article detailing J.P. Morgan Chase’s (JPM) commitment to bolstering its cyber security through increased spending and hiring of former military members. The bank was victimized by a cyber security breach in June 2014.

Given HACK’s penchant for responding favorably to such news items (see the controversy surrounding “The Interview” and the ETF’s reaction to the recent Anthem Blue Cross hack), it is not a stretch to say that if HACK was around in June, it would have soared in the days following news of the J.P. Morgan hack. [Anthem Hack Lifts Cyber Security ETF]

HACK did not exist in June 2014, but J.P. Morgan is having a favorable impact on the ETF. In October 2014, J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon said the banking giant will likely double its cyber security spending to $500 million within the next five years.

Important to HACK, Dimon is making good on that promise. J.P. Morgan’s security operation has 1,000 staffers, double the size of the comparable unit at Google (GOOG), according to Bloomberg. Add to that, J.P. Morgan is far from the only major financial services that is expected to increase cyber security spending in the coming years.

Citigroup’s (NYSE: C) cyber security budget jumped to $300 million at the end of last year while Wells Fargo (WFC) spends roughly $250 million a year on cybersecurity and has increased staffing in the area by 50%, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Increased cyber security spending by financial services firms is seen as a boon for companies such as FireEye (FEYE), Palo Alto Networks (PANW) and Japan’s Trend Micro. All three are members of HACK’s portfolio with FIreEye and Palo Alto Networks combining for 9.7% of the ETF’s weight.

Earlier this week, HACK surged after Russia’s Kaspersky Lab, a major cyber security firm, said a group of hackers have stolen as much as $1 billion from over 100 banks in 30 countries since late 2013.

Investors are buying into the thesis that increased cyber security spending bodes well for HACK’s longer-term potential. The ETF that the fund is now home to $231 million in assets under management, confirming HACK’s place on the list of most successful ETFs to debut in 2014. Impressively, HACK’s ascent to $231 million in AUM means the ETF has more than doubled in size over the past six weeks after topping $100 million in assets in early January. The ETF debuted in November.

For the original article, click here.

ETF News

Should You Have An All-ETF Portfolio? Betterment CEO Has An Answer

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MarketMuse update is courtesy of CNBC. CEO and Founder of Betterment , Jon Stein, offered his commentary on this issue to CNBC. Betterment is an automated investing service that provides optimized investment returns for individual, IRA, Roth IRA & rollover 401(k) accounts.

There’s a natural progression in the way the public responds to innovation. Something that first seems like a mere novelty becomes an interesting new niche, then a great idea and then, “How did we ever get along without this?”

In financial services, exchange-traded funds are somewhere around the third or fourth stage, between new niche and great idea. ETFs attracted more net investment last year ($239 billion) than did mutual funds ($225 billion), according to data from Morningstar. Five years earlier the net inflow into mutual funds was more than triple the net amount invested in ETFs.

In the last five years, the public’s affinity for ETFs raised assets under ETF management by 152 percent, to $2 trillion, up from $793 billion. Mutual fund assets only rose 53 percent during the same period.

Faster and cheaper information system infrastructure has helped the growth of ETFs. In my view, ETF portfolios will be the inevitable default for investors in the years to come because they are lower cost, more transparent and offer greater liquidity and tax advantages than mutual funds. Already, the increasing number of assets invested with automated investing services, which use all-ETF portfolios, underscores this shift.

Lower cost

By passively and systematically tracking an index, ETFs are far cheaper to run than most actively managed mutual funds that employ portfolio managers and analysts to select securities. That research costs money, and so does the frequent trading that’s common in such funds—they call it “active management” for a reason—not to mention the buying and selling of fund shares themselves, transactions that always involve the fund provider.

More transparent

ETFs also feature greater transparency. Their underlying portfolios change more rarely because the indexes that they’re based on generally maintain stable lists of components. The high turnover of many mutual funds and the fact that their holdings are reported only four times a year can make it difficult for shareholders to know exactly what they’re holding.

It’s not just the specific securities that can keep mutual fund investors in the dark. The broad nature of the fund itself can become obscured by what’s called “style drift.” Say growth is outperforming value; the managers of value funds, consciously or not, may start tilting toward more growth-oriented stocks.

Depending on what else they own, shareholders may become overweight in growth stocks and not even know it. By contrast, a value-stock ETF will hold value stocks no matter what.

ETFs are more transparent in another sense. The very low expenses and commoditized nature of ETFs make commissions and “kickbacks” to brokers or retirement-plan sponsors impractical. So if an ETF is recommended by an advisor or made available by a broker or retirement-plan sponsor, it’s likely to be an unbiased recommendation.

For the complete article from CNBC, click here

ETF News

Take A Drag Or Sip Out Of These Industries: Smoke and Alcohol ETFs Are Hot

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MarketMuse update is courtesy of Bloomberg’s Justin Fox. It is very difficult to invest stocks for long term, humans’ interests are always changing and that affects the stock market. Bloomberg’s Justin Fox suggests that people should invest in human behaviors such as the tobacco and alcohol industries, such as the tobacco sector big name, Philip Morris International Inc., PM or popular alcohol ETF,  Constellation Brands Inc., STZ. He explains that unless these products are banned, humans will always have an interest.

It would be really cool to know which industries are going to thrive and grow and create jobs in the future. It’s also really hard to figure that out ahead of time. If you’re just interested in which industries will deliver the best stock-market returns, though, history seems to point to an easy shortcut — invest in companies that sell addictive stuff.

I learned this dubious lesson by reading, in quick succession, two big new reports: the Brookings Institution’s analysis of the 50 “Advanced Industries” that are supposed to drive job and income growth in the U.S., and Credit Suisse’s annual “Global Investment Returns Yearbook.” The Brookings report tries to look into the future by measuring investment in technological progress by industry — and although most of the 50 advanced industries it identifies are what you would expect, there are some surprises. In the 2015 Credit Suisse yearbook, meanwhile, Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton of London Business School examine 115 years of stock-market returns by industry, and while they document a lot of technological upheaval, the two biggest winners for investors turn out to be decidedly low tech.

An advanced industry, by Brookings’ accounting, is one “in which R&D spending per worker reaches the top 20 percent of all industries and the share of workers with significant STEM knowledge exceeds the national average.” (STEM = science, technology, engineering and math. And R&D = research and development. But you probably knew that.) There’s lots of research showing that technological change drives economic growth, and R&D spending and STEM knowledge are supposed to be proxies for future technological change.

I don’t know of any obviously better proxies, but the results show the difficulty of any such accounting. The list of the very biggest R&D spenders isn’t particularly surprising:-1x-1

Dig deeper into the advanced industries list, though, and you soon come across industries that don’t seem all that advanced: railroad rolling stock, foundries, petroleum and coal products, metal-ore mining. Are these secret hotbeds of technological change that should command more attention? Probably not. One old-school industry, motor-vehicle manufacturing, does spend a ton on R&D ($48,461 per worker), but those others made the list mainly because there just aren’t that many industries in the U.S. that invest in R&D at all. To get to 50, you have to include a bunch of industries with per-worker spending of less than $5,000 a year. (No. 50, in case you’re wondering, is wireless-telecommunication carriers — which spent just $455 per worker in 2009.)

This isn’t necessarily a problem for the U.S. economy. One thing you’ll notice if you spend any time with the North American Industry Classification System is that it’s backward-looking. Older parts of the economy are divided into lots and lots of industries; newer ones aren’t. So you get railroad rolling-stock manufacturing, which employed 25,200 people in 2013 and generated $3.6 billion in output, counted as an industry on the same level as computer-systems design, which employed 1.7 million people and generated $246 billion.

Yet it’s these newer industries that generate the growth — at least, they have over the past 115 years. In 1900, according to the Credit Suisse yearbook, railroads accounted for 63 percent of stock-market value in the U.S. Now they’re less than 1 percent, and 62 percent of U.S. stock-market value is in industries that were small or nonexistent in 1900. The largest industries by market cap now are technology, oil and gas, banking and health care.

We’re all supposed to believe that past performance is no guarantee of future results. But given human nature, it seems reasonable to expect tobacco and alcohol to continue to do well — unless tobacco is completely banned, of course. Picking the next hot industry is a much harder task, yet it is a much more important one.

For the entire article, click here.

 

 

 

ETF News

Threat Of Hackers Grows And So Does Cyber Security ETFs

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MarketMuse update courtesy of Todd Shriber of ETF Trends, profiles the increase in cyber security ETFs as the threats of being hacked become more and more relevant.

The PureFunds ISE Cyber Security ETF (NYSEArca: HACK) continues to cement its status as a legitimate event-driven exchange traded fund.

HACK is higher by 0.7% Tuesday on volume that is already more than quadruple the daily average after Russia’s Kaspersky Lab, a major cyber security firm, said a group of hackers have stolen as much as $1 billion from over 100 banks in 30 countries since late 2013.

Various media outlets are reporting those hackers are more interested in financial gain than pilfering personal information from the banks’ customers. That point is unlikely to assuage the banks or their customers, but it is enough to have HACK trading at record highs for the second consecutive session.

HACK’s Tuesday momentum is carrying over from last Friday when the ETF soared to a record high on volume of nearly 1.4 million shares as President Obama hosted the first-ever cyber security summit, which featured luminaries from throughout the tech industry, including Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL) CEO Tim Cook.

Importantly, most of the action in HACK last Friday was of the bullish variety. So intense was buying activity in the ETF that the fund is now home to $231 million in assets under management, confirming HACK’s place on the list of most successful ETFs to debut in 2014. Impressively, HACK’s ascent to $231 million in AUM means the ETF has more than doubled in size over the past six weeks after topping $100 million in assets in early January. The ETF debuted in November.

News of the $1 billion bank hack, while positive for HACK in the near-term, also serves as reminder of the long-term opportunity with the ETF because the financial services industry is expected to be one of the largest spenders on cyber security enhancements in the coming years.

In October 2014, J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon said the banking giant will likely double its cyber security spending to $500 million within the next five years.

HACK benchmarks to the ISE Cyber Security Index, “which tracks the performance of companies actively engaged in providing services for cyber security and for which cyber security business activities are a key driver of their business model. These cyber security services are designed to protect computer hardware, software, networks and data from unauthorized access, vulnerabilities, attacks and other security breaches,” according to PureFunds.

 

Fixed Income, Global Macro Strategy, People Profiles

Rate Hike? When??

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MarketsMuse.com update courtesy of extract from Feb 16 CNBC reporting by Alex Rosenberg

Alex Rosenberg, CNBC
Alex Rosenberg, CNBC

There’s a major debate brewing in the financial markets, and it concerns the most important potential event of the year for stocks and bonds alike: the timing of a Federal Reserve rate hike.

In one corner are the economists. Many of those looking primarily at the state of the recovery say that the Fed will likely raise its key federal funds rate in June.

On the other side are traders, who say that current market dynamics—and prior experience with the central bank—tell them that a rate hike isn’t coming in 2015.

cnbc feb 16 rates yellen azous markowska

What the Fed actually chooses to do, of course, will have a profound impact on financial market, and perhaps on the economy as well. The federal funds rate, a critical short-term rate at which banks can lend to one other, has been kept ultra-low by the Fed since the financial crisis days of December 2008.

Now, many economists expect that the Fed is finally set to shift from ultra-low levels, given the strong state of the labor market.

With the unemployment rate declining and payrolls data showing some 250,000 payroll gains a month, “the U.S. labor market is screaming for policy normalization,” as Societe Generale economist Aneta Markowska put it in a recent note.

If the economists are right, a hint at a June rate hike could come as soon as Wednesday, when the Fed will release the minutes of their last policy meeting. If the minutes find them gushing about growth and unbothered by economic and geopolitical problems overseas, it could serve as a reminder for investors that a June hike is still on the table. So, too, could the congressional testimony of Fed Chair Janet Yellen in the following week.

The Fed is “much closer to hiking then putting it off,” said Neil Azous of Rareview Macro, a firm that advises large investors. After all, “it is hard to argue from an economist’s perspective that they shouldn’t at least start the process. Their models are telling them to, regardless of the problems abroad in Europe and Asia.”

Strong job creation, especially if February’s payrolls top expectations, could also hint at a tightening. “If the job market holds anywhere close to what it’s been running at, then yeah, we’ll get a hike,” agreed Deutsche Bank economist Joseph LaVorgna. “I don’t see why the Fed wouldn’t go in June.”

Still, that sentiment is clearly not reflected in the market. Fed funds futures are implying just a 20 percent chance of a rate hike in June, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

Indeed, if Yellen does give a hint in the weeks ahead that a June rate hike is possible, “the fixed income market would re-price swiftly and painfully against the consensus long position,” Azous said.

In other words, rates (which move inversely to bond price) could rise dramatically. And that, in turn, could have a profoundly negative impact on stock prices. Continue reading →

ETF News

PIIGS Bring Home the Bacon For The Eurozone

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MarketMuse update is courtesy of Tom Lydon from ETF Trends. 

Continuing with what has turned out to be exhausting coverage of European ETFs, the Portuguese, Irish, Italian, Spanish and Greek stocks (the PIIGS) ETFs are showing a bright immediate future for the Eurozone. 

Though still controversial, due in part to looming speculation that Greece could potentially depart the Eurozone, exchange traded funds tracking Portuguese, Irish, Italian, Spanish and Greek stocks (the PIIGS) have the look of value propositions.

Even with Greece’s change in government, one that threatens the country’s ability to pay its debts, meet funding needs and could hasten the country’s Eurozone departure, the Global X FTSE Greece 20 ETF (NYSEArca:GREK) has mustered a small year-to-date gain.

Earlier this month, Standard & Poor’s pared its rating on Greece’s sovereign debt to B- from B. The ratings agency is keeping the long- and short-term ratings on Greece on CreditWatch with negative implications. Greece’s B- rating is just one notch above CCC, a rating that implies vulnerability to nonpayment “and is dependent upon favorable business, financial, and economic conditions for the obligor to meet its financial commitment on the obligation,” according to S&P, scenarios that Greece is unlikely to meet in the near-term.

The iShares MSCI Italy Capped ETF (NYSEArca: EWI) and the iShares MSCI Ireland Capped ETF (NYSEArca: EIRL), often seen as the steadiest hand of the five PIIGS ETFs, have been far more alluring than GREK this year. EWI and EIRL are up an average of 6.5% with average volatility of about27%. GREK is up about 2% with 93% volatility.

Investors looking for exposure to multiple PIIGS through the convenience of one ETF that emphasizes value investing can turn to the actively managed Cambria Global Value ETF (NYSEArca: GVAL).

Cambria’s Mebane Faber “Faber employs a statistic called the Cyclically Adjusted Price-Earnings (CAPE) ratio to evaluate countries. First developed by Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller, the CAPE has proven effective at predicting the future performance of U.S. stocks. The lower the ratio is, the higher the expected return. Faber has applied the CAPE to other countries in his own research. Examining a period from 1980 through 2013, he found that those countries’ markets with a CAPE below seven subsequently produced a 14.4% 10-year annualized return while those with the highest CAPE above 45 produced only 1.2%,” reports Lewis Braham for Barron’s.

GVAL targets the cheapest, most liquid picks in countries where political or economic crisis have depressed valuations. GVAL’s eligible country universe includes Greece, Russia, Hungary, Ireland, Spain, Czech Republic, Italy and Portugal.

At the end of 2014, the five PIIGS member nations combined for 46% of GVAL’s weight,according to Cambria data.

Portugal’s CAPE is 7.7, Italy’s 9.6, Ireland and Spain about 11. The U.S.’s, by contrast, is 27, according to Barron’s.

Helped by its PIIGS exposure and what was an 8% weight to suddenly resurgent Russian stocks at the end of last year, GVAL is up 6.4% over the past month, giving the ETF an advantage of 60 basis points over the iShares MSCI ACWI ex U.S. ETF (NasdaqGM: ACWX).

For the original article from ETF Trends, click here