Cashing in on the smartphone craze New FONE ETF Debuts

Love ETFs? Love your smartphone? Well break out your iPhone, Droid or BlackBerry. Starting today, you can buy a smartphone ETF.

First Trust Portfolio launched the new ETF on Friday under the ticker FONE (FONE). It lists Samsung, Motorola Mobility (MMI) and Nokia among its major holdings. And experts are giving it a thumbs up.

"It's not heavily invested in just a few stocks," said Tom Lydon, president of Global Trends Investments and editor of ETFTrends.com. "It's pretty broadly diversified."

About a quarter of the ETF includes semiconductors, with another 23% dominated by communications equipment.

But the rest is spread out pretty well among electronic equipment, wireless services and others. And some of the bigger names aren't included among the top 10.

There's no Apple (AAPL), AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ) or Google (GOOG) among the ETF's top 10 holdings, which Lydon says "bodes well for how this index was constructed." But those names are part of both the index and the ETF, which have a total of 72 components.

The smartphone ETF is clearly a niche-y product. It's unlikely that big institutional investors will snap it up. But that might be exactly what retail investors are hungering for.

"Some of these companies are huge," said Rick Ferri, investment adviser at Portfolio Solutions.

"You're not getting a really pure play on smartphones."

The ETF comes less than a year after Nasdaq launched the NasdaqOMX CEA Smartphone Index (QFON). Since its debut in April 2010, the index has gained more than 19%.

Still, it's worth noting that this is roughly in line with how the PowerShares QQQ (QQQQ) ETF, which tracks the Nasdaq-100 and holds many of the same stocks, has done.

So investors don't necessarily need to buy the FONE ETF to cash in on the mobile craze.


Disclosure NONE. 

Claymore’s New ‘SEA’ ETF Sets Sail

Claymore Securities, the Lisle, Ill.-based money management firm known for its niche investment strategies, relaunched its shipping industry ETF “SEA” after being forced to close a previous version of the fund in April.

In an ETF-industry first, Claymore was forced to shut down SEA after a shareholder vote related to Claymore’s acquisition by Guggenheim Partners in October didn’t attract enough voters to establish a quorum. The vote was required to approve a change in the fund’s investment advisers. Claymore said at the time that it planned to open a new shipping fund as soon as possible, hopefully with the same ticker.

Claymore has made good on that pledge. The Claymore Shipping ETF fund is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with the same ticker (NYSEArca: SEA) and with the same expense ratio of 0.65 percent. The original SEA, launched in August 2007, had gathered almost $153 million by the time it closed.

Claymore Managing Director William Belden has said that the situation was extraordinary, particularly in view of the fact that none of Claymore’s other funds that had to conduct the same get-out-the-vote drive failed to obtain the required 50 percent quorum.

Belden added that the fact that many investors used SEA as part of short-term, sector rotation strategies meant that some shareholders no longer owned the fund by the time Claymore solicited their votes. Many held their SEA shares anonymously, making the vote-gathering challenge more significant, he said.

Disclosure I am Long SEA shares. 

New Asia ETF - ASEA

The other day we were discussing ETFs focusing on the BRIC Region (Brazil, Russia, India and China), so it's only fitting that we talk about a different region today, the Association of South Eastern Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The ASEAN region consists of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. And if you want to invest in these regions as a whole, then you are only one new ETF away...

• ASEA - Global X FTSE ASEAN 40 ETF

The new foreign ETF tracks the FTSE/ASEAN 40 Index and consists of the top 40 largest companies in the ASEAN region. Some of the top industries represented in the fund are telecommunications (15%), industrials (15%) and consumer discretionary (10%).

So if this fund sounds like a fit for your portfolio, you may want to check it out. As of today's close it was trading around $15.19.

Disclosure None

New Currency-Hedged ETFs Coming Soon

There are 5 new currency-hedged ETFs in the works from Deutsche Bank...

* DBBR - DBX Brazil Currency-Hedged Equity Fund
* DBCN - DBX MSCI Canada Currency-Hedged Fund
* DBEM - DBX MSCI Emerging Markets Currency-Hedged Equity Fund
* DBEF - DBX MSCI EAFE Currency-Hedged Equity Fund
* DBJP - DBX MSCI Japan Currency-Hedged Equity Fund

The strategy behind the new ETFs is utilize forward contracts to keep fluctuations in the price of the currencies under control and minimize the risk.

The new funds are near launch and just recently disclosed their underlying benchmarks. And as you can see, they have their names and symbols. When they are ready to go, I'll be sure to let you know, so stay tuned.

Disclosure none

New Junk Bond ETFs

New Junk Bond ETFs
Wednesday February 9, 2011

Today we have 4 new target-date junk bond ETFs from Guggenheim (formerly known as Claymore)...

* BSJC - The Guggenheim Bulletshares 2012 High Yield Corporate Bond ETF
* BSJD - The Guggenheim Bulletshares 2013 High Yield Corporate Bond ETF
* BSJE - The Guggenheim Bulletshares 2014 High Yield Corporate Bond ETF
* BSJF - The Guggenheim Bulletshares 2015 High Yield Corporate Bond ETF

The company had seven similar ETFs launch last June, but they were not high yield corporate bond ETFs like these. And Guggenheim has plans for some more of these target-date ETFs, that extend beyond these years.

There's no doubt junk bond ETFs are popular as of late, but investors must be careful in the analysis and research. And as of today these bond ETFs are trading around $25-$26.

Disclosure NONE