Joanne Hill, Head of Investment Strategy for ProFunds Group, examines more than 50 years of historical returns and provides new insights into the link between volatility and long-term performance in leveraged and inverse ETFs. Hill also discusses a simple rebalancing strategy that can help investors achieve leveraged or inverse index exposure over extended holding periods.

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ProFunds Group, the world’s largest manager of short and leveraged funds, announced today that it is launching four new ProShares ETFs, the first designed to seek twice the daily returns of indexes covering developed foreign markets, emerging markets, China and Japan. The new ETFs will be listed on NYSE Arca today.

“With some international markets posting strong year-to-date returns, investors are expressing interest in tools that allow them to gain magnified exposure to these markets,” said Michael L. Sapir, ProFunds Group Chairman and CEO. “These new ETFs complement our existing ETFs that are designed to provide short (or inverse) exposure to the same international indexes. Over the coming weeks, we plan to further expand our international offerings with ETFs covering more regions and specific countries.”

ProShares

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I'm sick of these last half-hour shenanigans, but this time it was different. I actually expected this it, because the market was at it's lower range during 12/12 - 12/16 when the market formed a double bottom. This is an example of how charts can provide some value in anticipating pullbacks and throwbacks and possibly, the dreaded "WTF pattern". WTF Pattern (noun): A technical pattern that usually occurs during the last hour or last half-hour or even the last 5-mins of any trading day. It doesn't care if you're a bull or bear. It is non-biased and only causes extreme agony and stress for the overnight holder. Toward the end of the day, traders sit at their trading desks bewildered and confused as to what just happened prior to the closing bell. This creates ...

The ProShares UltraGold and UltraShort Gold will take aim at the existing PowerShares DB ETNs.

 

ProFunds Group launched on Wednesday the first exchange-traded funds in the U.S. to provide short or leveraged exposure to gold or silver.

Last week, ProFunds made a splash when it launched the majority of the new 200% inverse and leveraged commodities and currency ETFs on the NYSE Arca. Those ETFs covered the DJ-AIG Commodity Index, crude oil, the euro and the yen—offering 200% long and short versions of each.

The new ETFs take aim squarely at the existing PowerShares Deutsche Bank-branded exchange-traded notes, which offer similar inverse and leveraged exposure in the ETN format, and at a lower expense ratio (see related story here).

PowerShares DB also has ETNs targeting gold, double long and short, and base metals double long and short, though no double long or short silver ETN.

In announcing the new

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The CIO position has been somewhat of a revolving door at ProFunds.

 

Asset manager ProFunds Group has plucked Todd Johnson from index and quantitative institutional money manager World Asset Management to be chief investment officer.

The CIO position has been somewhat of a revolving door at ProFunds and its exchange-traded funds group ProShares.

Gus Fleites, a longtime State Street Global Advisors official, took over the CIO reins in 2005. He lasted approximately a year in the role—a period of success for the company, especially with its ETFs—but left ProFunds under uncertain circumstances (see story here).

Fleites then moved to IndexIQ, but lasted only a few months in that job before leaving the hedge fund replication shop also.

The CIO that Fleites had replaced at ProFunds, William Seale, came back into the CIO role when Fleites left in 2006. George Foster, who had been a director of portfolios, assumed the

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