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’The S&P 500 ETF that’s a little bit zut alors, sacrebleu!
Back in October, iShares, the world’s leading exchange traded fund provider, decided to set an important transparency example for the ETF industry. The ETF provider began providing the market with details of its securities lending operations.
What do silver lease rates have to do with fund redemptions?
These are the silver lending rates for 2011 from the London Bullion Market Association, as derived from Libor minus the silver forward rate (Sifo):
This, meanwhile, is the number of shares outstanding (inverted) in the iShares Silver Trust over the same period:
How profitable is ETF arbitrage?
….about 6.7 per cent per year, according to this 2010 paper by Ben R. Marshall and Nuttawat Visaltanachoti of Massey University, and Nhut H. Nguyen of The University of Auckland.
The academics arrive at the figure after investigating the arbitrage opportunities that appeared between two of the most liquid equity ETFs in the world:
Blackrock’s prudent collateral approach, no periphery debt please
When it comes to physically-replicated Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs), the key criticism — if any — usually pertains to providers’ tendency to top-up management fees with stock lending revenue.
The theory is that the practice exposes investors to unnecessary counterparty risk,
iShares responds to FSB criticism of ETFs
The industry’s response to Tuesday’s warning note on Exchange Traded Funds from the Financial Stability Board has begun predictably with a statement from iShares — the world’s largest provider of ETFs.
Beware your Japan ETF exposure
Every time you switch on the financial TV networks all anyone is talking about is the EWJ exchange-traded fund.
As if it’s a perfect proxy for Japan.
Well, it’s not.
Well, not completely.
We’ve already noted the weirdness of the huge inflows experienced by US-listed Japan ETFs last week — something that was definitely not connected to the Bank of Japan’s asset purchases,
Who’s been buying Japan like crazy?
Here’s an about-turn for the books:
That chart’s from Reuters, and according to the newswire, investors pumped a record $956m of new cash into Japanese equity funds in the week ended March 16.
The majority of those flows headed into the iShares MSCI Japan fund,
Betting on a Nikkei rebound
Well, tomorrow’s Nikkei surely can’t be any worse than today’s.
As FT Alphaville noted on Friday, the iShares MSCI Japan Index Fund (EWJ) is proving an interesting barometer for investor sentiment about where the Nikkei is heading the next day.
The silver market’s conflicting signals
Talk to the precious metal bugs, and you’ll soon come across the story that there is a growing disconnect between what’s happening in the futures market and the physical market.
This, they say, is particularly the case for silver,
Those ETF shorts
Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager — with $3,450bn under management according to figures released on Wednesday — puts out a regular quarterly review of the ETF industry.
And as usual, it presents some interesting factoids on all matters exchange-traded fund — be they product,
Putting the ‘E’ into exchange-traded fund in Europe
Happy tenth anniversary, European exchange-traded funds. Prepare for a blow-out.
Blackrock’s ETF division iShares marked this week’s big birthday with the publication of its ETF landscape report, predicting a robust future for ETF asset growth in Europe.
iShares – the final leg
We are in the final furlong of the iShares trading game, where players have been busy shuffling £10m of virtual money between various exchange traded funds.
And extraordinarily successful they have been! With just three trading days to go before the final reckoning,
iShares trading game – a new name at the top of the pack
Just nine trading days to go in our iShares virtual trading game, using Exchange traded funds issued by Barclays Global Investors.
And what’s this? A new name at the top of the leader board, for sure.
Volatility shakes up the iShares league
The sickeningly sweet smell of burnt fingers was in the air on Monday as another big drop in China left many of the risk hungry investors playing our iShares EFT trading game with instant losses.
Indeed,