ProShares, the largest issuer of inverse and leveraged exchange traded funds, said this week that it expects none of its nearly 130 equity and fixed income ETFs will distribute capital gains this year.
“Tax efficiency is important to ETF shareholders,” said Michael L. Sapir, Co-Founder and CEO of ProShare Advisors LLC, in a statement. “We are pleased that our management of ProShares ETFs contributed to no capital gains being distributed to our shareholders.”
For the most part, ETFs that issue capital gains distributions typically experience greater trading activity, use futures contracts, see a significant change up in its underlying index or track fixed-income securities.
Specifically, leveraged and inverse ETFs that use futures contracts can incur capital gains distributions. Moreover, currency-hedged equity ETFs may see capital gains distributions, with managers triggering gains by rolling currency futures and forward contracts hedges as the U.S. dollar strengthened this year. [Why Some ETFs Have Cap Gains]
The no capital gains announcement from Maryland-based ProShares came just days after Invesco’s (NYSE: IVZ) PowerShares unit, the fourth-largest U.S. ETF issuer, said it expects just nine of its 116 ETFs to distribute capital gains this year.