Van Eck Launches Market Vectors Brazil Small-Cap ETF
Van Eck Global today introduced the Market Vectors Brazil Small-Cap ETF (NYSE Arca: BRF), the first U.S.-listed exchange-traded fund (ETF) to focus on Brazilian small-cap stocks.
BRF and its underlying index (Market Vectors Brazil Small-Cap Index, ticker: MVRIO) are designed to give investors exposure to domestic investment themes and opportunities, such as the growth potential in Brazil’s homebuilding and consumer goods sectors.
“In our view, small-cap stocks represent excellent direct exposure to the Brazilian economy since small-caps are typically driven by local trends,” said Jan van Eck, Principal at Van Eck Global. “BRF is well diversified and avoids the heavy commodities and materials weightings of other Brazil-focused products currently on the market.”
“Energy and Materials accounted for more than 50 percent of the weighting in the typical Brazil-focused index as of April 30th of this year,” continued van Eck. “By way of comparison, Energy and Materials made up just 16 percent of MVRIO at that same time. We believe that this makes BRF a unique product and one that will appeal to investors who are looking for a different type of exposure to Brazil’s local economy.” The top three industry weightings for BRF’s index are Household Durables, Food Products and Specialty Retail at 16%, 9% and 8%, respectively.
Full Story: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/van-eck-launches-market-vectors-brazil-small-cap-etf,824925.shtml


General Electric, whose shares have climbed 17% in the past three months, is still down by more than half over the past year, suggesting there’s plenty of room to rise. GE, United Technologies and 3M are the three-largest holdings of the Dow Jones U.S. Industrial Sector Index Fund(IYJ), which jumped 18% in April alone.
May 14 (Bloomberg) — Harvard University, the richest U.S. college, raised its holdings of exchange-traded funds that track stocks in Brazil, China and Mexico in the first quarter as emerging markets outperformed U.S. equities.
Barclays Global Investors’ iShares group is apparently moving forward with plans to launch actively managed exchange-traded funds.
NEW YORK, May 13 (Reuters) – Recent concerns that growth in the United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG.P) (UNG) has been the primary driver behind the strong gas price run-up this month may be overblown, some industry analysts said.
Stocks tumbled, led lower by the Nasdaq, which fell -3.0%, or -52 points, to 1,664. The Dow dipped -184 points to 8,285, while the S&P dropped -24 points to 884. Oil slipped -83 cents to $57.88 a barrel, while gold climbed $2.00 to $925.90 an ounce.
(La Jolla CA) With the price of petroleum hitting a six month high, stocks and sectors other than Big Oil are also prospering. There are other benefits to owning shares in these companies or ETFs, as they are not as exposed as an Exxon (NYSE: XOM ) or a British Petroleum (NYSE: BP) to the fluctuations in the price of crude. These stocks and sectors bring diversity and downside protection to a portfolio while still gaining when the cost of oil increases.
Even though the stock market has rebounded from its March lows, millions of individual investors are still stuck in the mud. They’re lost, scared, disillusioned, and confused, which means they’re probably still losing money. Only the best investors adjust their investment strategies to avoid financial catastrophe. And what about the worst investors? They just keep repeating their mistakes, perfecting them until they can stand no more.
AMERICANS IN THE PAST TWO YEARS have been closely watching residential real estate, as TV commentators breathlessly relate each downward tick in home prices and upward move in foreclosures. But all the while, another important part of the real-estate market has been quietly cratering, all but ignored by the general press. Since peaking in early 2007, the value of the nation’s commercial property has fallen an estimated 30% to 40%.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Shares of U.S. financial stocks fell on Wednesday as the latest data from the government showed that consumer spending continues to fall. Analysts had expected a small boost in consumer spending in April.
Although financial services stocks have taken much of the credit for the broad-based market rally that began more than two months ago, technology names may be the safer bet for all kinds of economic scenarios that might lie ahead. After all, banks and other financial names still have a host of unresolved issues around capital levels and distressed assets — and remain vulnerable to another batch of grim economic data.
Hartmut Graf, head of the index team at the German stock exchange in Frankfurt, gave a fascinating talk on the performance of leveraged indices at yesterday’s “Investing in ETFs” conference.
The ETF Billion Dollar Club shrank this month. This exclusive club, consisting of ETFs and ETNs with more than $1 billion of Average Daily Value Traded (ADVT), now has only 15 members based on the most recent month’s trading, down from 19 for the prior month.
Claymore Advisors has filed a request with the SEC to introduce three new ETFs, each of which would be actively managed. Among the proposed funds is the Claymore Delta Global Hard Assets ETF, which would be the first actively-managed commodity ETF.
The case for owning high-yielding stocks during hard times runs something like this: Consistent dividend payers are, by definition, financially stable or they wouldn’t be able to sustain their payouts. Plus, owning high yielders means you get paid while you wait for better times to return. But over the past year and a half, the lure of dividends proved to be a siren song. The main problem: Financial stocks represented a disproportionately large percentage of big dividend payers.
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