Thus any fund manager tracking the index must, in effect, lend more to the countries borrowing the most.
So these managers eschew the passive approach to tracking an index in favor of a semi-active approach to portfolio management.
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U.S. mutual funds that invested in large growth stocks in 2012 returned an average of 15.3%, while the similar ETFs tracking the index returned 16.4%, according to Morningstar.
Exchange traded funds focusing on small companies and real estate or tracking the Topix index experienced the biggest inflows.
An index tracking prices that companies pay for goods jumped up sharply in July, which means inflation is a growing threat.
JPMorgan Chase's index tracking 22 emerging market currencies has returned 7.9% a year over the past decade, with a tiny annualized volatility of 6.6%.
The Powershares DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund ( DBC) is a widely followed and liquid ETF that tracks the changes in the Deutsche Bank Liquid Commodity Index.
The index tracking leveraged-loan trading fell 6% over the last three months, an indication that the weakening credits will force banks to write-off a chunk of their exposures.
With three of the country's banks now nationalized and their market caps reduced to zero, the OMXI15, an index tracking Iceland's 15 biggest shares, had to be recalculated, so some traders were confronted with a startling 76.0% drop in leading shares.
Not only was he saving his clients money, the index-tracking ETFs performed better as well, he said.
These include low cost index-tracking choices for those who do not think that they can pick a better-than-average investment manager.
Traditional mutual funds tend to be actively managed, while ETFs adhere to a passive index-tracking strategy, and therefore have lower expense ratios.
After closely tracking the Employment Cost Index for a quarter-century, compensation levels in the All Volunteer Force exploded over the last ten years.
Approximately 60 percent of the allocation is already managed in passive index-tracking portfolios and the remaining 40 percent is managed externally by active investment management firms.
That was especially the case in commodities markets, where selling by index-tracking ETFs would be instantly visible to traders, unlike harder to spot sales of bullion.
He switched to ETFs in 2006 because these index-tracking products have lower expense ratios than the traditional mutual funds that try unsuccessfully to beat the market.
The firm will also try to keep at least 95% of the funds invested in the components of whatever index they are tracking, at least 80% of the funds in stocks.
The greatest triumph of the Big Mac index has been in tracking the euro.
These two scenarios can create an environment where performance expectations of investors may not be met due to the tracking error versus the underlying commodity index that is created.
Yet, curiously, several academic studies have concluded that the Big Mac index is surprisingly accurate in tracking exchange rates over the longer term.
The wider Hang Seng benchmark index finished 0.4% lower, tracking similar losses for the other major markets across region.
In order to achieve zero tracking error, the fund manager must hold exactly the index for every second of the day.
The suppliers of bond ETFs get around the liquidity problem by using representative sampling, which simply means tracking only a sufficient number of bonds to represent an index.
The Index is a rules-based, modified global-capitalization-weighted, float-adjusted index intended to give investors a means of tracking the overall performance of a global universe of listed companies engaged in the solar energy industry.
Just how risky is this new index Vanguard's funds and ETF will be tracking?
The bet against the dollar is buying the PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Down ( UDN), which moves higher tracking a basket of currencies including the euro versus the dollar.
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The expectation that an index fund will get EXACTLY the return of the target index sets the stage for an interesting problem: Zero tracking error is achievable, but it comes at a very high price.
If you must buy an index fund, we said, go for a broader fund tracking the Wilshire 5000.
Stocks were also tracking a negative trading session in Asia, where Hong Kong's Hang Seng index closed down 2.2% and the Nikkei 225 was off by 0.8%.
The most recent update to the Index shows the sharpest year-to-year rise in clean-energy patents since Heslin began tracking clean-energy innovation trends in 2002.
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