Swap-Based ETFs: What Are the Risks?
Monday's post discussed the inner workings of the two swap-based ETFs launched by Horizons in late 2010. Many investors are understandably concerned about the risks involved in these rather complicate [...]
Monday's post discussed the inner workings of the two swap-based ETFs launched by Horizons in late 2010. Many investors are understandably concerned about the risks involved in these rather complicate [...]
Last fall, Horizons Exchange Traded Funds launched two innovative new ETFs. Rather than simply holding the stocks in the indexes they track, these funds use a derivative called a “swap” to get exposur [...]
Joel Greenblatt has a sense of humour—I’ll grant him that. In The Big Secret for the Small Investor (Wiley, 2011), he pokes fun at the crass title of his previous book, You Can Be a Stock Market Geniu [...]
On Monday, I took issue with the argument that cap-weighted bond indexes are fatally flawed. Rob Arnott, the creator of fundamental indexing, has argued that the classic model is “patently ridiculous. [...]
When Rob Arnott, the creator of fundamental indexing, spoke in Toronto last week, his presentation focused exclusively on equities. When he took questions at the end of his presentation, I asked him a [...]
Earlier this week I discussed the promise of fundamental indexing. This strategy takes aim at the shortcomings of traditional cap-weighted indexes, which overweight growth stocks and are prone to bubb [...]
Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a talk by Rob Arnott, the creator of the Research Affiliates Fundamental Indexes (RAFI). If you’re not familiar with fundamental indexing, here’s a primer. [...]
How do you measure the performance of an index fund? That sounds like a simple question, but it’s one I think many investors still have trouble with. Otherwise I wouldn’t routinely get questions like, [...]
In my last post, I explained that US-listed ETFs that hold overseas stocks do not expose Canadians to fluctuations in the US dollar. This is an important idea to understand if you’re comparing ETFs th [...]
Currency hedging can be confusing for investors who use index funds and ETFs that hold foreign stocks or bonds. The basic idea, which I have written about before, is not terribly hard to understand. I [...]