June 12, 2007: ETF babies: don't throw them out with the bathwater - yet

Over the past few weeks several new ETFs or related instruments have been launched. Since these may be lost in the shuffle with all of the other clutter in our investment world, I thought it would be a service to list some without commentary:

Wisdom Tree presented a dividend-related REIT ETFs, the International Real Estate Fund (DRW).

The SPDR DJ International Real Estate Fund was launched in December of 2006 and has accumulated almost $1b in assets to date (RWX).

Barclay's has filed for nine commodity-related ETNs (similar to ETFs), Agriculture, Energy, Ex-Energy, Grains, Industrial Metals, Livestock, Petroleum, Precious Metal and Soft Goods. www.ishares.com has the prospectus for each.

Covered call ETFs were recently released, Advent/Claymore Enhanced Growth and Income (LCM), Enhanced S & P Covered Call Fund (BEO), Dow 30 Premium and Dividend Fund(DPD), First Trust Fiduciary/Asset Management Covered Call Fund (FFA), Madison Claymore Covered Call Fund (MCN), S&P Covered Call Fund Inc (BEP). Good luck.

Healthshares have a series of parsed medical ETFs. Their most recent is Healthshares European Medical Devices and Devices (HHT).

The world's largest hedge fund manager, Man Group PLC, initiated the Man Dual Absolute Return Fund on Friday. It is listed on the NYEX and will operate as a closed end, high performance security. Trading at about $20.00/share.

State Street brought forth five fixed income funds, SPDR Lehman 1-3 month T-bil (BIL), Barclays TIPS (IPE), Lehman Aggregate Bond (LAG), Lehman Intermediate Term Treasury (ITE),Lehman Long Term Treasury (TLO).

Barclays enhances their ETN series with the CBOE Standard and Poors 500 BuyRite Index (BWV). Yield is approximately 9%.

And www.vanguard.com. the low cost ETF/mutual fund company has launched a bundle of ETFs over the past month. I recommend you go to their website for a look.

As almost all ETF observers predicted a while ago, ETFs are making major inroads in the traditional mutual fund arena. In addition, many new ETFs are parsing the worlds markets into more select and dicier pieces. I do nor subscribe to trying to get rich quickly buy putting too many chips into eclectic ETFs or their cousins. Steady as she goes is my maxim. Consider it to be yours as well.