Japan’s gold exports have doubled this year as individual investors locked in profits after gold prices soared earlier in the year, but retail demand for bullion has been picking up steadily over the past few months.

Industry sources say the rise in retail demand for gold may turn Japan into a net importer again, but that may not happen immediately as many players are still looking to unload their gold holdings when prices recover.

Japan was a net importer of gold in October for the first time this year as investors bought on a plunge in prices, but exports exceeded imports again in November, finance ministry data showed on Friday.

In the eleven months to November, Japan’s exports of unwrought solid gold, gold bars and sheet totalled 393.9 tonnes, up from 174.9 tonnes in 2007.

In November alone, Japan exported 47 tonnes of gold, rising more

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Nervy investors spur rush at Swiss gold refiners

By Arnd Wiegmann and Lisa Jucca

 http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSLI46181820081217?sp=true

MENDRISIO/ZURICH, Switzerland, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Sealed off by grey concrete walls and barbed wire, the workmen in protective glasses and steel-toed boots at this smelter cannot work fast enough to meet demand from the nervous rich for gold.

This refinery near Lake Lugano in the Alps is running day and night as people worried about recession rush to switch their assets into something that may hold its value.

“I have been in the gold business for 30 years and I have never experienced anything like this,” said Bernhard Schnellmann, director for precious metal services at the refiner Argor-Heraeus, one of the world’s three largest.

“Production has dramatically increased since the middle of the year. We cannot cope with demand,” said Schnellman, wearing a gold watch on his wrist.

Spot gold hit a record $1,030.80 an

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Barclays Global Investors expects its exchange-traded funds business in Brazil to reach $1 billion to $2 billion in the next year.

The forecast follows the introduction of the first three BGI iShares ETFs for the Brazilian market last week (see story here.)

The iShares ETFs were the first ETFs approved by the Brazilian regulator, the Comissão de Valores Mobiliários, a process that BGI began planning three years ago. More ETF companies may now follow iShares' lead into Brazil, where hedge funds and institutional use of ETFs is expected to lead the adoption of ETFs by local investors.  

In most Latin American ETF markets, it has been institutions leading the way, and retail investor use of ETFs expected to be a much longer-term story.

Mexico and Chile are among the easiest markets in Latin America to introduce ETFs, and these are the markets where BGI's early Latin

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Global stocks flat… Oil falls, trades around $53 a barrel…  Europe shares down 0.3 percent, Japan up 1.7 percent… Wall Street facing poor start… Dollar rebounds, bonds rise

A weaker oil price reflecting poor economic demand ahead shut off a rally in world stocks on Friday while government bond yields sank.

Wall Street looked set for a poor start and the dollar recovered from early losses.

Oil fell below $54 a barrel, on course to end the month down more than 20 percent, as OPEC ministers prepared to meet in Cairo to discuss potential further supply cuts to combat a global fall in demand .

Indian stocks were higher as a siege in Mumbai between police and Islamist gunmen continued, but India’s 10 year bond yield fell to its lowest level in three years on expectations that the attacks will an impetus to rate

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The head of BGI's iShares business gives his views on slumping market share numbers, ETFs still in registration, spreads and fund expenses.

 

Lee Kranefuss, chief executive officer of BGI's iShares business, recently took time to discuss with IndexUniverse's Murray Coleman the future of exchange-traded funds and recent developments relating to the industry's dominant product line.

 

IU:  Barclays recently renamed the Lehman-based bond indexes to the Barclays Capital moniker. Will the iShares Lehman ETFs change?

Kranefuss:  Barclays Capital completed its acquisition of Lehman Brothers' North American Investment Banking and Capital Markets businesses. As part of the transaction, Lehman Brothers' indices have become part of Barclays Capital. The Lehman indexes are now Barclays Capital indexes. iShares will be renaming those ETFs. It's our practice to include the index provider in the name of the funds; we think that transparency is important for investors. People ought to know which index a fund is following.

...

The head of BGI's iShares business gives his views on slumping market share numbers, ETFs still in registration, spreads and fund expenses.

 

Lee Kranefuss, chief executive officer of BGI's iShares business, recently took time to discuss with IndexUniverse's Murray Coleman the future of exchange-traded funds and recent developments relating to the industry's dominant product line.

 

IU:  Barclays recently renamed the Lehman-based bond indexes to the Barclays Capital moniker. Will the iShares Lehman ETFs change?

Kranefuss:  Barclays Capital completed its acquisition of Lehman Brothers' North American Investment Banking and Capital Markets businesses. As part of the transaction, Lehman Brothers' indices have become part of Barclays Capital. The Lehman indexes are now Barclays Capital indexes. iShares will be renaming those ETFs. It's our practice to include the index provider in the name of the funds; we think that transparency is important for investors. People ought to know which index a fund is following.

...

The head of BGI's iShares business discusses the company's slumping market share numbers, ETFs still in registration, spreads and fund fees.

 

Lee Kranefuss, chief executive officer of BGI's iShares business, recently took time to discuss with IndexUniverse's Murray Coleman the future of exchange-traded funds and recent developments relating to the industry's dominant product line.

 

IU:  Barclays recently renamed the Lehman-based bond indexes to the Barclays Capital moniker. Will the iShares Lehman ETFs change?

Kranefuss:  Barclays Capital completed its acquisition of Lehman Brothers' North American Investment Banking and Capital Markets businesses. As part of the transaction, Lehman Brothers' indices have become part of Barclays Capital. The Lehman indexes are now Barclays Capital indexes. iShares will be renaming those ETFs. It's our practice to include the index provider in the name of the funds; we think that transparency is important for investors. People ought to know which index a fund is following.

IU:

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Murray Coleman's got a great article up right now on the Obama-induced bounce in solar energy ETFs.

As Murray points out, the Claymore/MAC Global Solar Energy ETF (NYSE: TAN) is up 55% over the past five days, and other alternative energy funds are rallying too. The First Trust ISE Global Wind Portfolio (FAN) is up 30% over the past week, and the PowerShares Global Clean Energy ETF (PBD) is up nearly as much, all on expectations that Obama will funnel money into the alternative energy build-out.

I've had a few people ask me why these stocks would bounce now, when Obama has been building his lead in the polls for some time now.  It's a way of suggesting that the bounce will necessarily be short-lived; a temporary euphoria before the inevitable crash.

That may be true. But remember that just six weeks ago, Obama wasn't looking so hot in the polls.

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PIMCO today launched its Global Multi-Asset Fund (GMAF), a global asset allocation portfolio designed to outperform the traditional 60% stock/40% bond asset allocation approach. It uses a wide variety of index-based derivatives as a core hedging technique to accomplish that outperformance.

The fund of funds may cater to an appetite for more-diversified, risk-averse funds after investors took a wallop during the recent market tailspin. However, from PIMCO's perspective, the fund is not being launched to exploit short-term market conditions, but rather, because traditional noncorrelation approaches have not worked. Ten of the 11 major asset classes have been in negative territory during the recent market route, and that is evidence of a larger breakdown in conventional asset allocation philosophy, PIMCO CEO Mohamed El-Erian noted in a statement accompanying the fund's launch.

The Global Multi-Asset Fund, a fund of funds, will invest in PIMCO underlying portfolios that use S&P 500,

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Hedge Fund TurmoilState of the Hedge Fund Industry(http://HedgeFundBlogger.com) An increasing number of hedge funds are telling customers they cannot have their money back just now (though not a new practice) as rising withdrawals on top of problems in getting collateral back from prime brokerages’ rehypothecations (such as most notably at Lehman Brothers), plus talk of the past year being especially bad for hedge funds’ performance – are all supposedly hitting retail and institutional confidence in hedge funds. Hedge fund performance at minus 10% is described as “shocking!”, but as many have done better than that as have done worse than that.There are at least 3 thousand relatively reputable hedge funds. They are not a homogeneous instrument or asset class that performs as one. When the stock market has fallen 25% and given the ...