Select List - Week of 2/24/14

The ETFG Select List supports both Financial Professionals and Investors with their respective Exchange-Traded-Fund selection processes.  Developed by the Research Policy Committee at ETF Global, the ETFG ETF Select List features the 5 most highly-rated equity ETFs by Sector, Geographic Region and Strategy as ranked by the ETFG Quant model.  This handy reference guide enables you to quickly and easily identify ETFs which meet your chosen criteria.

Just to provide an overview of the favored groups within these three respective fields, below please find those groups and their Top 5 equity ETFs that comprise the highest group average by Sector, Geography and Strategy:

Sector: Basic Materials/Group Average: 62.36

	Ticker	Focus	Region	TER	Risk*	Reward*	Quant*
1	GGGG	Basic Materials	Global	0.59%	8.28	9.63	66.40
2	SIL	Basic Materials	Global	0.65%	6.93	8.29	63.30
3	XME	Basic Materials	North America	0.35%	5.68	7.33	61.60
4	IYM	Basic Materials	North America	0.46%	5.08	7.61	61.20
5	GDX	Basic Materials	Global	0.52%	6.10	7.19	59.30

  

Geography: Asia-Pacific/Group Average: 67.44

	Ticker	Region	Focus	TER	Risk*	Reward*	Quant*
1	EWY	Asia-Pacific	Broad Equity	0.61%	4.18	10.00	72.90
2	IDX	Asia-Pacific	Broad Equity	0.58%	6.15	9.84	69.40
3	EIDO	Asia-Pacific	Broad Equity	0.61%	4.95	9.64	68.50
4	FXI	Asia-Pacific	Large Cap	0.73%	5.37	8.35	64.10
5	ADRA	Asia-Pacific	Large Cap	0.30%	4.48	8.34	62.30

  

Strategy: Broad Equity/Group Average: 68.08

	Ticker	Focus	Region	TER	Risk*	Reward*	Quant*
1	EWY	Broad Equity	Asia-Pacific	0.61%	4.18	10.00	72.90
2	IDX	Broad Equity	Asia-Pacific	0.58%	6.15	9.84	69.40
3	EIDO	Broad Equity	Asia-Pacific	0.61%	4.95	9.64	68.50
4	EWC	Broad Equity	North America	0.51%	3.43	8.23	64.90
5	EMDD	Broad Equity	Global Ex-U.S.	0.85%	4.94	8.98	64.70

This ETFG Select List is meant to be a quick reference guide and not to replace checking the daily ETFG Quant Rankings which are also available in detail on an etf's individual ETFG Tearsheet, Green Diamond Reward Ratings and Red Diamond Risk Ratings.  To best support the ETF selection process, ETF Global strongly encourages users to perform a more comprehensive review by utilizing the additional tools and resources available at www.etfg.com to further research and diligence exchange-traded-funds.

Thank you for reading ETFG Perspectives!

Feb Liquidation Watch Hits All Time High

As of the beginning of February, we have seen just 4 Exchange-Traded-Products (ETPs) with announced and/or actual closings for the year - a comparatively slow start and significantly below the annualized levels of the most recent years.  While the trend of these recent years certainly suggests that the rate of closures will increase in order to regress to the mean, an increase may be more directly supported by the simple fact that the month of February, with 91 products on the list, achieved another new high in the overall number of ETPs on the ETFG Liquidation Watch List

The breakdown of the February Liquidation Watch reveals that the list is dominated by Equity and Commodity ETPs with 39 and 28 respectively.  Additionally, there are 12 Fixed Income ETPs, 8 Currency ETPs and 4 Multi-Asset ETPs that round out the February report.  While equity products may dominate this month’s Liquidation Watch List in absolute numbers, the commodity ETPs certainly represent a far greater relative percentage of their respective asset class as there are multiple times the number of equity funds within the ETP universe than there are commodity products.

In looking more deeply at what has driven the behavior of the Liquidation Watch, a few interesting trends have emerged.  The number of eligible products who have been in existence for more than two years has increase slightly but remains in a fairly steady range in and around the 1,200 level.  With elevated asset levels and markets just off all-time highs in certain cases, the number of ETPs with less than $5 million in assets under management is actually one of the lowest levels that we have seen on the Liquidation Watch in several quarters.  Therefore, it is fairly clear to see that the growth in the number of products on the list is a direct result of the swelling of products with negative Trailing Twelve Month performance.  Interestingly, the number of ETPs with negative trailing twelve month performance has not only been elevated in recent months but also reached an all-time high this month with 621 ETPs.  To put this in perspective, this represents approximately 40% of the 1,539 ETP universe that we cover.

We will watch these trends closely as the year unfolds and see if these underlying trends in fact continue to come to fruition.  Thank you for reading ETFG Perspectives!

2nd ETP Trading & Investing Forum

Congratulations to ETF Global who has been selected by co-producers The Expert Series & WealthManagement.com to facilitate the 2^nd ETP Trading & Investing Symposium on April 8^th  in New York City.  View Press Release

For those not in attendance at the inaugural event last September, this dynamic symposium brings together the most widely recognized experts in Exchange-Traded-Funds and features some of the brightest minds in Capital Management.  With its roots reaching back to research and academics, the ETP Trading & Investing Forum is a very different type of industry meeting.  These sessions provide for renowned speakers to address cutting edge topics within a vibrant and intimate learning atmosphere.  Sessions are capped for in-person attendance (200 on April 8^th) while the Continuing Education qualified video content will be available both on Expert Series TV and WealthManagement.com.

The forum is comprised of two half day sessions with the morning session (8:00-12:00) addressing the Wealth Management audience and the afternoon session (1:00-5:00) addressing the Institutional audience.  Both sessions will be held on Tuesday, April 8^th at the NYSSA conference center in Times Square (1540 Broadway).

For complete event details including the agenda, registrations and sponsorship, please visit www.expertseries.org  We look forward to seeing you there!

Congratulations to ETFG and have a great weekend! 

Recent Fund Flow Trends

Fund Flows can quickly cut to the chase by reflecting where the investment world is placing their bets on the future direction of the markets.  We always like to invoke that old saying “Just Follow the Money.”  Specifically, to and from where within the world of Exchange-Traded-Products has the capital been flowing recently?  Let’s start with the ETFG Fund Flows Summary for Equity ETPs over the last three months:

Geographic Region:

Region	November	December	January
Asia-Pacific	-11.10M	444.65M	-1.04B
Developed Markets	844.13M	384.95M	-562.62M
Emerging Markets	-237.59M	507.60M	-513.84M
Europe	409.97M	266.56M	-46.01M
Frontier Markets	924.59K	-2.81M	143.76K
Global	156.25M	-386.44M	-279.73M
Global Ex-U.S.	181.32M	252.94M	-23.17M
Latin America	56.92M	78.41M	45.44M
Middle East & Africa	1.16M	14.61M	-5.44M
North America	3.13B	-1.56B	5.03B

Probably the clearest trend here is the broad and massive outflows in the month of January from Asia-Pacific into North America.  This is echoed by the smaller but large relative sized outflows from Emerging Markets which has been well chronicled in recent publications.

Sector:

Sector	November	December	January
Basic Materials	58.16M	-136.09M	-110.41M
Consumer Discretionary	-45.23M	28.58M	-348.77M
Consumer Staples	1.90M	46.09M	-383.95M
Energy	-78.64M	-132.11M	39.72M
Financials	428.20M	-27.00M	307.00M
Health Care	-965.52M	94.88M	-636.81M
Industrials	134.11M	86.74M	158.40M
Natural Resources	4.93M	3.12M	-14.45M
Technology	212.84M	11.24M	525.47M
Telecommunications	4.01M	-15.79M	-27.37M
Utilities	926.57K	-334.69M	226.19M

Fund flows, while less pronounced within the Sectors, is most concentrated in coming out of Healthcare in November and January and consistently into Financials, Industrials and Technology.

Fund Flows for individual ETPs are available on the Fund Flows tab of each ETFG Tearsheet.  For a summary view of Fund Flows including the Top Inflows and Top Outflows for various time intervals, please see Fund Flows Summary

Thank you for reading ETFG Daily Perspectives.