New ETFs Take Innovative Approach To S&P

A trio of new exchange traded funds (ETFs) launched on Friday, taking a different twist on the Standard & Poor’s benchmarks.

They will use the same stocks as the S&P but the ETF will weight names by revenue rather than market-cap sizes, reports  Murray Coleman for Index Universe. Sean O’Hara, president of RevenueShares Investor Services, says that weighting by revenue was the most efficient way to keep the S&P benchmarks’ lineup the same while providing different patterns of return.

Some analysts don’t like the price so far: 0.49% in annual fees. O’Hara says that the returns based on back-tested data still would have been better than the S&P 500’s average annualized 11.4% between 1991-2007.

The new underlying indexes were created so investors wouldn’t fall prey to security selection bias. The new ETFs are:

• RevenueShares Large-Cap Fund (RWL): Aims to take the best of the S&P 500
• RevenueShares Mid-Cap Fund (RWK): Designed to complement the S&P 400
• RevenueShares Small-Cap Fund (RWJ): Replicates S&P 600