Tag Archives: Wall Street Journal

ETFs Hit New Milestone As Individuals Put More Into ETFs Than Mutual Funds

MarketsMuse blog update profiles the new milestone exchange-traded funds have reached as now more than ever, individual investors have pouring more money into ETFs than traditional mutual funds. This MarketsMuse blog update is courtesy of an analysis done by Broadridge Financial Solutions and found in the Wall Street Journal’s article, “A New Milestone for ETF Adoption“, with an excerpt below.

Individual investors have a lot more money invested in traditional mutual funds than in exchange-traded funds. But as people continue pumping dollars into ETFs, their ETF holdings grew by more in dollar terms than their mutual-fund investments over the year through March—apparently for the first time—according to an analysis by Broadridge Financial Solutions.

That conclusion is based on the company’s tally of fund and ETF holdings in accounts at “retail” companies, including full-service and discount brokerages, which cater to individual investors and their advisers. Broadridge, based in Lake Success, N.Y., sells communications and technology services to financial-services companies.

Individual-investor holdings of ETFs grew by $267 billion in the year through March, a 24.4% increase, according to Broadridge. Over the same period, individuals’ holdings of long-term mutual funds grew by $255 billion, or 5.6%, the company said.

“This is the first period in which we’ve seen that the actual dollar amount in the retail channel is higher in the ETF space than in the mutual-fund space,” says Frank Polefrone, senior vice president at Access Data, a Broadridge unit in Philadelphia. ”It’s a big shift over what we’d seen a year ago or two years ago.”

Broadridge has been tracking the data for more than four years.

To continue reading about the latest ETF milestone, click here.

Bitcoins Become Trading Firms’ Focus

MarketsMuse blog update profiles how the increasing interest in bitcoins is leading some investors in opening bitcoin financial services firms. Many believe that this move can help reduce the volatility and increases favorability of bitcoins.  This update is courtesy of the Wall Street Journal’s article, “Big Investor Involvement Could Boost Bitcoin“, with an excerpt below.

Some of the U.S.’s biggest proprietary traders and investors are testing the waters for a bigger move into bitcoin, giving a potential boost to the fledgling virtual-currency industry.

While still cautious of becoming exposed to “cryptocurrencies,” some of the firms, which trade with their own money on the.ir own behalf, say they see potential for big profits in trading bitcoin as more investors enter the market and financial-services firms use the currency to streamline transactions.

Their involvement could help reduce volatility in the market for bitcoin, which has struggled to gain legitimacy in part because of concerns about wild swings in its price.

Among the companies at the forefront of this move is DRW Holdings LLC, a high-frequency trading firm in Chicago founded by former options-pit trader Donald Wilson in 1992. DRW is a founding investor in a new bitcoin financial-services firm called Digital Asset Holdings that launched last month. Cumberland Mining & Materials LLC, a DRW subsidiary, has “begun to experiment with cryptocurrency trading,” DRW said.

To continue reading the article on bitcoin firms from the Wall Street Journal, click here.

 

Technology Company Seeks to Shake Up the Way Corporate Bonds Trade

WSJ logo

Below extract courtesy of Wall Street Journal, as reported by Katy Burne 

Institutional equities-trading platform Liquidnet is preparing to launch a credit-trading network in the fall, following regulatory approval last week of its acquisition of high-yield bond platform Vega-Chi.

The initiative is the latest example of a technology company seeking to shake up the way corporate bonds trade, amid a challenging fixed-income trading environment and an increasing willingness by debt investors that traditionally use the telephone to buy and sell on electronic systems.

Liquidnet is privately held, with a majority interest owned by founder and Chief Executive Seth Merrin. Its purchase of Vega-Chi, announced in March, is scheduled to close Friday following approval of the deal in late July from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Continue reading