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Displaying 131-140 out of 151 results for "Leveraged ETF".

Did BoA's 2007 CLOs Defraud Investors?

We have posted a new paper today showing that on July 2007 Banc of America appears to have transferred at least $35 million of previous losses to unsuspecting investors in two of its CLO offerings - LCM VII and Bryn Mawr II. Investors ultimately lost nearly $150 million in October 2008 when these two CLOs backed by leveraged loans were liquidated.

Leveraged loans issued to below investment grade corporations were frequently extended by a syndicate of lenders intending to re-sell...

President and CIO of Direxion admits that leveraged ETFs are not appropriate for most investors

Today Seeking Alpha posted an interview with Dan O'Neill, President and CIO of Direxion, one of the first and best known issuers of leveraged ETFs. Readers familiar with our work on leveraged ETFs know that we feel these products are almost always unsuitable for retail investors.

Surprisingly enough, Mr. O'Neill agrees completely:

The leveraged indexed ETFs are used by very tactical investors, and so there we have bull and bear funds. They have daily betas, which means that essentially...

FINRA Regulatory Notice: Complex Products

FINRA recently released Regulatory Notice 12-03: Heightened Supervision of Complex Products, outlining their increased scrutiny of a wide variety of alternative investments including structured products, inverse or leveraged exchange traded funds, and asset-backed securities. Here at SLCG, we've done research on each of those subjects, and have a variety of ongoing projects that bear directly on the issues highlighted by the Notice.

The products identified include:

  • Asset-backed...

Futures-Based (Commodities) ETFs

Investors may think, when investing in Futures-Based Commodities exchange traded funds (ETFs), that they are gaining exposure to the underlying commodity. In this blog post, we discuss the ability of these ETFs to track the spot price of the underlying commodity.

In a previous blog post, we introduced the basics of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). In this post, we are going to discuss a specific kind of ETF: Commodities Futures Based ETFs.

There are a large number of Exchange Traded Funds...

NY Times on the Hosier decision

The New York times has an article about the MAT and ASTA products sold by Citigroup that were the subject of a $54.1 million award in Denver last April. SLCG provided expert testimony and analysis for the claimants in this case, including assessing the MAT/ASTA products at issue, and we are excited that the Times has drawn attention to these highly risky investments.

The MAT and ASTA products were hedge funds that implemented a leveraged municipal bond arbitrage strategy. Essentially,...

Leveraged ETFs

Leveraged Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are some of the most popular exchange-traded vehicles and (as a result) are liquid, widely available, and very likely to be on the radar screen of even casual investors.

In a previous blog post, we introduced the basics of ETFs. In this post, we are going to discuss a specific kind of ETF: Leveraged ETFs. This post is part of a two-part series. The next post will concern a related instrument called Inverse Leveraged ETFs.

A Leveraged ETF offers...

Inverse ETFs

Inverse exchange traded funds (ETFs) are, by most measures, just as popular and liquid as their leveraged counterparts. In this post we discuss the rebalancing and tracking behavior of these ETFs.

This is the second part of our two part series. Last time we discussed leveraged Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). In this post, we are going to discuss a related kind of ETF: Inverse ETFs.

An Inverse ETF offers investors a daily return that is opposite of the daily return of the index or asset...

Introduction to ETFs

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are investment funds that are listed on a major stock exchange and typically track some underlying security, index, commodity, or other asset. ETFs, like mutual funds, are often designed to track assets that are otherwise difficult to purchase individually or in small amounts, such as an index or commodity. Compared to mutual funds, ETFs are characterized by generally lower fees and higher liquidity because ETFs are traded on major market exchanges. In addition,...

What are 'structured products', anyway?

By Tim Husson, PhD

We've done a lot of work on structured products. And I mean a lot. In addition to our research on valuation and suitability issues, we've devoted a section of our website to informing investors about different types of products, as well as Tear Sheets evaluating several thousand structured products released over the past couple years. We have found that most structured products are issued at a substantial premium, and that many investors (especially retail investors) do...

Dishonest Sales of LEFTs by RBC Capital Markets

Secretary Galvin Charges RBC Capital Markets and Agent with Dishonest Sales of Leveraged and Inverse Leveraged Exchange Traded Funds

The Enforcement Section of the Massachusetts Securities Division of the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth alleges that Michael Zukowski, a registered representative of RBC Capital Markets, made "numerous unsuitable recommendations and sales" of leveraged and inverse leveraged exchange traded funds (ETFs) to clients who did not understand the risks...

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