Trevir Nath
ETF Options
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), similar in many ways to mutual funds, are investment funds traded on stock exchanges. ETFs track the performance of commodities, bonds, and large indices such as the S&P 500 (SPX), NASDAQ (IXIC), Dow Jones (DJI), etc. Much like stocks, ETFs experience price changes throughout the trading day in which they are bought and sold. Fundamentally, the prices of assets traded remain close to, but not always equal, to its net asset value. Largely attractive due to lower costs, flexibility, minimal capital gains taxes, and leverage for market exposure, ETFs have become popular amongst investors. With a recent influx of ETF investments, the risks associated can have severe ramifications to the individual investor and financial markets. To mitigate these risks, ETFs can have options written against them as a hedging strategy for speculative investors.
ETF Overview Following the 2008 Financial Crisis, financial institutions sought alternative investments offering structure, transparency and liquid products. At face value, ETFs provide investors with a vehicle to meet their demands. Exchange traded funds are classified as open ended funds allowing investors to gain diversified exposure to financial assets ranging from emerging markets to large indexes. ETF shares are created by financial institutions which replicate the market movement of an underlying index. For example, SPDR funds are a group of ETFs tracking the movement of
Investors tend to use triple-leveraged ETF to obtain triple the return yield of the investments. However, they are discouraged to invest on triple-leveraged ETF as the disadvantages overwhelm the advantages. One of the advantages of triple-leveraged ETF is that it gives three times the return whereas one of the disadvantages of triple-leveraged ETF is that it could lose triple of the tracked index. According to Cummans (2015), ‘The additional risks come in the form of counterparty risk, liquidity risk, and increased correlation risk’. Thus, ETF has higher risk as it may lose three times the return and increases bankruptcy rate. Result shows that the annual return to the triple-leveraged ETF is expected to be triple the annual return to the S&P 500 index, it is only applicable to theory where everything is in constant. In reality the tracked index fluctuating frequently, it will not be three times of the
One must pretend to know the broad and yet differentiated world of banking and equity portfolios without bothering to actually learn about them. Use words such as ‘instability’, ‘hedging’, and ‘derivatives’ to inspire awe and trust among those who discuss these activities with you. Of utmost importance to Step Two, one must invest in only certain types of products to assure that one’s portfolio remains inflexible and susceptible to crashing.
In 1949 Alfred Winslow Jones, a sociologist investigating fundamental and technical research to forecast the stock market for Fortunemagazine, set up an investment fund with himself as general partner. The fund followed three key tenets: (1) always maintain short positions, (2) always use leverage, and (3) only charge an incentive fee of 20 percent of profits with no fixed fees. Jones called his portfolio a “hedged” fund (eventually shortened to “hedge fund”) because he had short positions to offset his long positions in the stock market. Theoretically, the overall portfolio was hedged against major market moves.
Over the past 5 years, ETFs have surged in popularity as they continue to grow and evolve. Just this past year, the global exchange traded products industry reached another milestone, topping $3 trillion in combined assets under management. Now investors are searching for the next asset class which will expected to explode on the scene as ETFs have recently. They may have found it last week when Eaton Vance rolled out the first of its Nextshares products. The funds, commonly called exchange traded mutual funds, are actively managed and traded at the funds net asset value but carry low fees found with traditional ETFs.
9. What are the primary differences between index funds and ETFs? What are two examples of ETFs?
Dimensional Fund Advisors is an investment consulting firm, founded by David Booth in the year 1981. Mr. Booth was a Ph.D. student at the business school and one of Professor Eugene Fama’s students, a professor who came up with the efficient market hypothesis. Mr. Booth believes in the soundness of the hypothesis that he says the financial crunch supplied further proof and support of market efficiency as far as publicly traded stocks and bonds are involved, but he cautioned that the idea should not be extended to other areas of the financial market and its managers make money by applying this strong belief.
The virtue of putting a financial stake into both the stocks and exchange traded funds (ETFs) is a sprawling and a dazzling investment decision. However, (Reiss, 2016) explains that it may also turn negative is the stock and ETFs screening process is done blindly. Based on Yahoo finance and ETFdb ETF Screener, I chose to invest and trade in the following stocks, equity and non-equity exchange traded funds:
The Hedge Fund industry ended 2015 with about $2.9 Trillion dollars in Assets under Management (AUM). The average return was between -0.05% and 1.63%. This sector of the investment industry has grown at an explosive rate, in the year 2000, there was an estimate of 4,800 funds while today the number is closer to 11,000. Nevertheless, there has been a slowdown in the number of new hedge funds. This past year, an average of 172 new hedge funds opened per quarter which represents the lowest level since 2010. The average leverage ratio of global funds is 2.7.
Hedge funds for many years have attracted billions of dollars from investors in search of higher returns. Performance in Hedge funds is driven by two components, alpha (manager skill) and beta (market-driven return). From 2009 to 2014 the financial markets experienced strong bull markets, and beta has driven hedge fund performance as managers with net long market exposure were rewarded. However, over this time period, investors’ return expectations have declined from the high-teens back in 2009 to above 10% in 2014 and to mid-to-high single digits today. This change in expectations in expected returns stems from the idea that beta will add very little value over the next few years due to the capital markets trading near all-time highs.
Because Ameritrade gets most of its revenue from transactions and interest will mean that we will need to find companies in the industry that have similar revenue streams. This also means that Ameritrade’s revenue should be very sensitive to the movement of the market. It is also important to note that since Ameritrade’s revenue is sensitive to market fluctuations we will have to forecast how it will react in situations where the
Institutions often trade of shares and institutional order’s can have a major impact on market volatility. In smaller markets, institutional trades can potentially destabilize the markets. Moreover, institutions also have to design and time their trading strategies carefully so that their trades have maximum possible
The ETF is a financial product, which has attracted a large number of financial product designers. The ETF as a creative idea has opened a significant number of empty rooms on the exchange market, which needed to be filled with new ETF products. This is what attracted the financial product designers to create different types of ETFs in the last 21 years. Barclays’ global fund advisor introduced WEBS (world equity benchmark shares) in 1996 as a first ETF to provide American investors with easy access to the forging markets. They created a family of ETFs and each ETF had “ishares” as a first name and the index it followed as a second name (Ferri, 2002) . The ETF influence could first be seen in Europe, when the German Deutsche bank presented an ETF linked to commodity in 2006 (Fuchita & Yasuyuki, 2007). ETF Barclays continued to generate new EFT products by launching the first ETF linked to the bond price index in 2002.
Mutual funds are an easy, convenient way to invest, without having to worry about choosing individual stocks. A mutual fund can be defined as a single portfolio of stocks, bonds, and/or cash managed by an investment company on behalf of many investors. The investment company manages the fund, and sells shares in the fund to individual investors. When one invests in a mutual fund, they become a part-owner of a large investment portfolio, along with all the other shareholders of the fund. The fund manager invests the contributions when shares are purchased, along with money from the other shareholders. Every day, the fund manager counts up the value of all the fund's holdings, figures out how many shares have been purchased by
160-161). Once these options are reviewed then one can make that optimal decision as to what type of investment would be the best options to choose from. Next, is bonds which is a financial instrument, that is issued by a corporation or government entity and is required to be paid back; known as an IOU. These will mature overtime and gain face value, and usually come in all types and varieties to choose from; some taking as long as 100 years to reach it maturity date. Lately, is mutual funds and EFT’s, these are securities that are held in different sectors and eliminate any form of risk compared to other investment; known as the closed-end fund or the open-ended fund. So, what is a “close-end fund, is a fixed amount of dividends in a portfolio of assets; where shares of a closed-end funds can be traded among investors much like stocks” (Kelly & Williams, 2017, pg. 163).
Among the most fundamental risks, associated with exchange-traded derivatives, is variable degree of risk. According to Ernst, Koziol, & Schweizer (2011), the transactions in