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Roger has his pulse on the latest and greatest of the ETFs from iShares, and starts off This has been some week for new ETFs, howyadoin?
No kidding. There are ETFs for everything now. It's a race to see who can offer the most ETFs with the most indexes, the most backtested and data-mined investment strategies, and whatever else can justify grouping together a bunch of stocks in a themed portfolio. I commented on his blog:
I'm waiting for the "Global Companies with more than 2 consonants and 3 vowels" ETF.
All kidding aside, I do like having the ability to focus on sectors. I mostly use ETFs in my portfolio. Of course, if we're going to be contrarians then you have to start wondering if we're entering an era where managed mutual funds will collectively outperform the boring no-brainer ETFs.
The concern I have with many ETFs centers around volume/liquidity and the spread between the bid-ask. To paraphrase a line from Schwarzenegger's 2003 campaign, "some of those spreads are so wide I could drive my Hummer through it."
Passing on the opportunity to quip about "tight spreads" and "Hummer." Although it's tempting to cut loose.