ETF Showdown

It's widely known that energy stocks aren't the place to be these. Even the blue chips are getting hammered, a fact highlighted by a decline of almost 6% in the past month for the Energy Select SPDR (NYSE: XLE). Makes sense. West Texas Intermediate oil futures are down about 15% since the start...

Despite a sluggish March, the pace of new ETF introductions remains fairly brisk in 2012 and it's BlackRock's (NYSE: BLK) iShares unit leading the charge. The world's largest ETF sponsor has rolled out roughly 40 new funds this year and plenty of bond funds have been included in that group. Even...

In a market environment that seems to be putting a premium on eschewing risk, it might not feel like like the right time to be embracing high-yield, or junk, bonds. The iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (NYSE: HYG) and the SPDR Barclays Capital High Yield Bond ETF (NYSE: JNK), two of...

With Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) running the show for the Nasdaq, technology sector ETFs and the tech sector at large this year, it might be easy to forget there are some other high-flying, triple-digit stocks that are widely followed and viewed as important players in the tech universe. And that means...

For almost 15 years, the iShares MSCI Germany Index Fund (NYSE: EWG) was the lone Germany-specific ETF on the market. That's right. The Euro Zone's largest economy, the world's fourth-largest economy and the country that was the world's largest exporter until recently went a decade and a half with...

There's no denying it. Investors love dividend ETFs and ETF issuers are more than happy to oblige by rolling out new funds aimed at income investors. More dividend options in the ETF world should be a good thing for investors, but a lot of these new dividend ETFs look like mirror images of each...

The low beta and low volatility themes with ETFs has taken off in a big way with ETF issuers. No doubt it, the "low vol" lifestyle has found its way to the emerging markets universe as well. The EGShares Low Volatility EM Dividend ETF (NYSE: HILO) was one of the first entrants to the low...

So many growth ETFs, so little time. These days, many growth ETFs are delivering solid returns to investors and with this corner of the ETF universe so densely populated, it might just be easier for investors to focus on two simple factors before making a decision: The fund's expense ratio and its...

Quiet as it may be kept, the number of U.S.-listed exchange traded funds offering exposure to Canada is proliferating at a decent pace these days. Part of the increasing number of ETFs with northern exposure comes from soaring production of unconventional energy resources, such as the oil sands of...

It's no secret that iShares, the world's largest ETF issuer, has been issuing new funds at warp speed this year. And it's no secret that some of those funds look a lot like other ETFs that have been around a while. What is interesting about some of the recently introduced iShares ETFs isn't so...