After recently passing their three-month anniversaries, the first active stock exchange traded funds (ETFs) have shown better results than their rival indexing funds.
Murray Coleman for IndexUniverse acknowledges that it has been a short period of time and that three months cannot really be viewed as a valid data set.
However, it’s encouraging when it comes to actively managed funds, because many questions about them centered around how they were going to do in the absence of back-tested data. But these positive first three months could draw investors toward active ETFs.
Many investors see a few advantages for actively managed ETFs. For example, the PowerShares Active Alpha Multi-Cap Portfolio (PQZ), selects from a pool of the 2,000 largest stocks by market-cap size. This allows for flexibility in making updates of up to three stocks per week. This gives an advantage over indexing funds which are essentially stuck in a group of stocks.
Through Aug. 1, PQZ had lost only 5.9% over the past three months, while the average mulit-cap core mutual fund lost 9.2% over this same period. David O’Leary, chief investment officer at AER Advisors, says their ability to eliminate lagging stocks when needed has been key this year.
Some actively managed ETFs include:
- PowerShares Active Alpha Multi-Cap (PQZ): down 6.9% over the past month; $7 million assets
- Bear Stearns Current Yield (YYY), up .2% over the past month; $51 million assets
WisdomTree has also launched four new currency ETFs that are classified as actively managed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The funds seek to earn current income reflective of money market rates available to U.S. investors.
These four funds are:
- WisdomTree Dreyfus Chinese Yuan Fund (CYB), down 1.5% over the past month; $219 million assets
- WisdomTree Dreyfus Indian Rupee Fund (ICN), up 5.8% over the past month; $10 million assets
- WisdomTree Dreyfus Brazilian Real Fund (BZF), up 3.0% over the past month; $107 million assets
- WisdomTree Dreyfus Euro Fund (EU), down 1.4% over the past month; $21 million assets
The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.