State Street Global Advisors' SDPRs offer the only two Japanese equity ETFs based on this index series. The annual rebalancing of the Russell/Nomura Japanese stock indexes just concluded, resulting in more than 30% turnover rates for each series in the benchmarking family. The Russell/Nomura Total Value Index had 212 deletions and 176 additions, while the Russell/Nomura Total Growth Index had 270 deletions and 136 additions. Those changes represented capitalization turnover ratios of 30.9% for value, and 33.3% for growth, among the highest-ever index rebalancing for the Russell Investments and Nomura Securities' Japanese equity benchmarks since their launch in 1981. There are Japanese stock exchange-traded funds from Barclays Global Investors' iShares family, Northern Trust's NETS and from WisdomTree Investments. However, State Street Global Advisors' SDPRs offers the only two Japanese equity ETFs based on this index series: the SPDR Russell/Nomura PRIME Japan ETF (NYSE Arca: JPP) and the Russell/Nomura Small Cap Japan ETF (NYSE Arca: JSC). JPP ...

The ETF industry has given us a lot to be thankful for: lower costs, better diversification, lower taxes.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I thought I would pull together a list of 10 ETFs I'm have earned my thanks. The list could be much longer: 20, 30 or even 50 ETFs might qualify. But these ETFs have helped shape the ETF industry of today, allowing millions of investors to build better portfolios. As a journalist, they've been fun to write about, too.

1) S&P 500 SPDR (NYSEArca: SPY): SPY was the first ETF in the United States and set the stage for everything that followed. It remains the largest and most-traded ETF in the world, delivering complete exposure to the S&P 500 for an expense ratio of just 0.0945%. What's more, it trades at super-tight spreads and hasn't paid a capital gains distribution since 1996. What more do you want?

2) PowerShares

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Key News• Credit-default swap traders wagered the most on debt of Italy, Spain and Deutsche Bank AG, according to a Depository Trust&Clearing Corp. report that gives the broadest data yet on the unregulated market.  (Bloomberg)• Key Reports Due (WSJ):8:15a.m. Oct ADP Employment Report: Expected: -100K. Previous: -33K. 10:00a.m. Oct ISM Non-Manufacturing Composite Index: Previous: 50.2.

Quotable "An essential point in the social philosophy of intervention is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever.  The whole system of intervention collapses when this foundation is drained off: The Santa Claus principle liquidates itself.”

   Ludwig von Mises

 

FX Trading –  We know it’s never easy and there is no Holy Grail.  But……we are big believers that after following the chain of price action, sooner or later, it all comes back in some way to the rate of interest.  Interest rates are the core of all things

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With inflation in prices running at more than 10%, and inflation in credit running at up to 100% and more, bond investors are getting the lowest yield in half a freaking century? Hahahaha! Morons!

From Bloomberg.com we get the headline “Treasuries’ Scarcity Triggers Repo Market Failures”, by Liz Capo McCormick, which is probably very scary, but I have no idea what the hell she is even talking about or why it is important, neither of which is made any clearer when the article explains, “In a repurchase agreement, or repo, a customer provides cash to a dealer in exchange for a bill, note or bond. The exchange is reversed the next day, with the customer receiving interest on the overnight loan. A Treasury security is termed on ’special’ when it is in such demand that owners can borrow cash against it at interest rates lower than the general collateral rate”, which

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Hong Kong is considered one of the most mature, if also volatile, real estate markets in the world.

 

Making bets on the performance of the real estate investment trust market in Hong Kong may soon become easier.

The Hang Seng Indexes Company has launched a REIT index covering real estate investment trusts listed in Hong Kong. The Hang Seng REIT Index will serve as the basis for index products, including funds and derivatives, says the index provider, as well as a benchmark for investors in the REIT asset class.

Hang Seng Indexes continues to move into more investment niches popular with ETF investors.

Earlier this year, it launched leveraged and short indexes on the Hang Seng Index and Hang Seng China Enterprises Index (see story here.)

While international real estate ETFs have become more prevalent, the focus has been on European real estate to a large extent. Ten of

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September was a disaster for the stock market in general, but not necessarily ETFs.

Exchange-traded funds continued to grow in prominence as part of the overall U.S. equities market in September, reaching 35% of all trading, up from the previous record-level of 31%, just reached in August, according to National Stock Exchange data. The biggest part of that trading story has been State Street Global Advisors' SPDRs family of ETFs, which for the month of September represented approximately 50% of all ETF trading volume, with close to $1.4 trillion of the nearly $2.8 trillion in ETF trading volume. Year-to-date, the SPDRs also represent approximately 50% of ETF trading volume ($8.8 trillion), with Barclays Global Investors' iShares family a distant-second at $3.75 trillion.

But in a month of massive market turmoil, the news was not all good for ETFs. The iShares lost ground

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As I am travelling in Europe at the moment (see “Another town, another train…”), this week’s edition of “Words from the Wise” does not provide the customary review of the financial markets’ movements and economic statistics. Given time constraints, today I will only share with you a number of video clips in lieu of excerpts from news items and quotes from market commentators. Quite a few of the video items include links to related articles for those who prefer the written word.

Firstly, as we are awaiting word on the bail-out plan, a very topical quote from Jim Welsh (Welsh Money Management): “We will be told that the Federal Reserve and

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Allied Motion Technologies (AMOT) is a maker of motion control products such as brushless and brush direct-current (DC) motors, drives, and control electronics. Customers of Allied Motion Technologies include companies from the semiconductor manufacturing, industrial automation, medical equipment, and military and aerospace markets. The company also manufactures optical encoders used to measure rotational and linear movements of parts in diverse applications, such as printers, sorting machinery, machine tools, robots, medical equipment and tunable lasers.

Allied Motion Technologies also makes spectrum analyzers for use in the aerospace and defense, industrial, computer peripheral manufacturing, medical and telecommunications markets. The Colorado-based company distributes its products through its sales force, independent sales representatives, agents, and distributors primarily in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The company has manufacturing facilities in California, Michigan, New York, Oklahoma, Eastern Europe and China.

Competitors to Allied Motion include Axsys Technologies Inc., Dynamics Research Corp. and privately held Custom Sensors &

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Financial NewsJason Corcoran in Moscow 16 June 2008 The Russian securities market has attracted substantial inflows from western investors in the past few years but the infrastructure to support the growth is only slowly catching up.The average daily volume of transactions of Russian stocks stands at $6.1bn (€3.9bn), which includes $5bn traded on domestic stock exchanges with the remainder traded on foreign exchanges, according to investment bank Troika Dialog. Investors have recognised some improvements over the past few years, but still regard dealing in Russian securities as a transaction, settlement and custody risk. Most Russian investment offerings to non-Russian investors are domiciled in the Cayman Islands or in Guernsey, and often administered in Ireland. Global custodian State Street administers Prosperity Capital and Hermitage Capital, the two largest equity funds investing into Russia, from Dublin. Damian McEvoy, ...

Financial NewsJason Corcoran in Moscow 16 June 2008 The Russian securities market has attracted substantial inflows from western investors in the past few years but the infrastructure to support the growth is only slowly catching up.The average daily volume of transactions of Russian stocks stands at $6.1bn (€3.9bn), which includes $5bn traded on domestic stock exchanges with the remainder traded on foreign exchanges, according to investment bank Troika Dialog. Investors have recognised some improvements over the past few years, but still regard dealing in Russian securities as a transaction, settlement and custody risk. Most Russian investment offerings to non-Russian investors are domiciled in the Cayman Islands or in Guernsey, and often administered in Ireland. Global custodian State Street administers Prosperity Capital and Hermitage Capital, the two largest equity funds investing into Russia, from Dublin. Damian McEvoy, ...