Today we are featuring top-performing “Health" equity mutual funds , which primarily invest in equity securities of healthcare and related companies.

Investors can find such funds by checking out the entire list of the Zacks #1 Rank Health Equity Funds.

3 Healthy Picks

Eaton Vance Worldwide Health Sciences A (ETHSX) long-term capital growth by investing in a global and diversified portfolio of health sciences companies. It was incepted in July 1985.

The fund pursues its objective by investing in worldwide health sciences portfolio. The fund invests primarily in common stocks of companies engaged in the development, production or distribution of products related to scientific advances in health care and companies with a broad range of market capitalization's, including small companies.

The fund has an expense ratio of 2.06% and a portfolio turnover of 48% as May 2009. The fund offers dividends and capital gains annually.

Samuel D. Isaly has been lead manager of the fund since

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As the U.S. dollar depreciates because of  increased government spending, investors may turn to exchange traded funds (ETFs) to defend their wealth. Here’s how.

The U.S. dollar is under attack and there are several factors that are eating away at the dollar’s strength, remarks Ron DeLegge for ETF Guide. The Chinese yuan is being pushed to be included in the IMF’s basket of fund payments for bilateral trades, and the currency may overtake the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The U.S. government is also continuing its defacement of the dollar by increasing spending and deficits.

WisdomTree Dreyfus Chinese Yuan (CYB): up 2.7% year-to-date
PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish (UUP): down 2.6% year-to-date
PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bearish (UDN): up 1.8% year-to-date

How can an investor protect one’s wealth against a falling dollar?

Currency Funds. These types of ETFs let you capitalize on

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It was bound to happen, I suppose. While exchange-traded funds have not yet attracted the multi-trillions of dollars that mutual funds have, ETFs have become popular enough they’re starting to acquire some of the bad habits of their older rivals.

The first generation of ETFs were low-cost, broadly diversified products from firms like Barclays and Vanguard, well suited to average investors wishing to expose the core of their portfolios to the broad equity market.

But we are well into the second phase of ETF proliferation, with more volatile sector ETFs sporting considerably higher price tags. How complex it’s become can be inferred from the fact BetaPro Management Inc. is hosting an all-day Horizons ETF University session today at Ryerson University, part of a seven-city road show. 

BetaPro came under fire last week from consumer advocacy group FAIR for not disclosing clearly enough

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With Fund.com as a partner, ex-Rydex exec's ready to launch actively managed ETFs using country and sector global rotation strategies.

 

Noah Hamman is chief executive officer of AdvisorShares Investments LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based exchange-traded funds provider. Before starting the firm in late 2006, he was vice president of business development at Rydex Investments.

The start-up company recently sold a 60% stake to Fund.com, a New York-based over-the-counter public asset manager and educational content provider. It trades with the ticker symbol of FNDM. IndexUniverse's Managing Editor Murray Coleman recently caught up with Hamman to discuss events surrounding his company and active ETFs.

 

IndexUniverse: Why did you sell a majority interest in AdvisorShares?

Hamman: There were two reasons. One was to find a financial partner for the business. Fund.com is also relatively new, but they're very well-financed. The second part was about trying to work with someone who can integrate our business

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SEC has applied new rules to short selling. Naked short selling has been stopped on Thursday. Now sellers have to borrow company shares before selling them on the market and later on buying them for lower price in order to close position.This SEC prohibition could attract more attention to Short/Inverse Exchange Traded Funds. Funds provide possibility to profit from declining market even without borrowing of the shares and setting up margin accounts. Another advantage is that in case of short selling trader can lose unlimited amount without proper stop loss. Contrary with Short ETF your investment can go just to zero.Two major issuers of such a funds are ProShares and Rydex Investments. Already now we can see higher volume than usual for Inverse ETFs. But this situation is mainly because of accelerating credit crunch. After volatility will go down a little bit we will see how ...