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PowerShares ETFs and the “Intelligent ETF Revolution”

Nate Geraci March 14, 2013

Listen to The ETF Store Show every Tuesday at 9am on ESPN 1510 as we cover everything you need to know about Exchange Traded Funds and the world of investing.

Click here to listen to The ETF Store Show now.

PowerShares ETFs were the main topic on The ETF Store Show this past week as John Hoffman, Invesco PowerShares’ Director of ETF Institutional Sales & Capital Markets, joined us on the program.  PowerShares is the fourth largest ETF provider and described as “leading the Intelligent ETF Revolution through its family of more than 140 domestic and international index-based ETFs and actively managed ETFs”.  John discussed the unique PowerShares approach to ETFs and explained some of the most important factors he thinks investors should consider when comparing ETFs.  John also offered some excellent insight into recent ETF fund flows (i.e. where ETF investors are placing their money).

In our weekly market update, we discussed the latest jobs report and debated whether this overall positive report could actually end up being bad for your investments.  While the Federal Reserve and “Helicopter Ben” have certainly been more than accommodating, concern is rising that continued economic improvement may actually result in the so-called punchbowl being taken away just as the party really gets going.  We explained the potential impact this could have on your investments.  In our ETF spotlight segment, we examined the PowerShares Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt ETF (ticker PCY).  It’s been our experience that far too many investors fail to have proper diversification in the fixed income portion of their investment portfolios, with a particular bias towards US bonds.  An ETF such as PCY can offer much needed diversification to a fixed income portfolio.

We Talk FlexShares ETFs with Marie Dzanis

Nate Geraci March 7, 2013

Listen to The ETF Store Show every Tuesday at 9am on ESPN 1510 as we cover everything you need to know about Exchange Traded Funds and the world of investing.

Click here to listen to The ETF Store Show now.

On our most recent radio broadcast, Marie Dzanis, Head of Sales & Servicing at FlexShares, joined us to discuss the FlexShares family of ETFs.  Flexshares, operated by $700+ billion asset manager Northern Trust, takes a unique approach to ETF construction by “seeking investment outcomes that help meet real-world needs such as inflation-hedging, targeting duration exposure, long term growth and liquidity”.  While many ETFs look to track market-cap weighted indexes (think S&P 500), FlexShares attempts to add intelligence to the process in order to meet these specific investor objectives.  As ETFs soar in popularity, we continue to see more and more ETF providers offering these sort of rules-based or intelligent index ETFs.  As we’ve said for years, ETFs have effectively “democratized” investing – bringing institutional caliber strategies to retail investors that they couldn’t have dreamed of accessing just a short decade ago.  ETFs such as the ones FlexShares offers are yet another example of this leveling of the investment playing field where investors can gain access to sophisticated strategies while also taking advantage of the potential benefits of ETFs at the same time (low cost, transparency, tax efficiency, etc).   We discussed this particular topic in more detail with FlexShares’ Marie Dzanis, who also explained why Northern Trust made the dive into ETFs to begin with.

In our weekly market update, we explained what the so-called “sequester” is and how it could potentially impact your investments.  With equity markets at all-time highs and interest rates at all-time lows, we also discussed the challenges investors are facing in allocating their investments right now.  In our ETF spotlight segment, given our focus on FlexShares ETFs, we delved into a very interesting TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) ETF – the FlexShares iBoxx 3Yr Target Duration TIPS ETF (ticker TDTT).  Not only was this one of the faster growing ETFs in 2012 (it scooped up over $500 million), but it also seeks to address two of the biggest concerns facing fixed income investors right now – rising interest rates and inflation.

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