CFRA Research

Among the myriad reasons advisors and investors have gravitated to exchange traded funds over actively managed funds in recent years are superior tax efficiencies. When active fund managers sell part or all of a position at a profit, investors foot the tax tab via a capital gains distribution, but...

Flows to exchange traded funds in 2018 are unlikely to approach the record $450 billion seen last year. This year's ETF inflows totals will likely be on par with or slightly exceed the $200 billion seen from 2014 through 2016. Two issuers – BlackRock Inc.'s (NYSE: BLK) iShares unit...

Some fixed income exchange traded funds are languishing amid the Federal Reserve's 2018 rate tightening plans, prompting investors to depart some longer-dated, traditional bond ETFs. “Despite growing demand for bond ETFs in 2018, one of the industry’s oldest and largest products is...

Wednesday brought a sea of red for U.S. equity markets. The standout was the utilities sector. While the S&P 500's 2018 gains evaporated, the Utilities Select Sector SPDR (NYSE: XLU) jumped 2.43 percent on volume that was well above the daily average. This month, XLU, the largest utilities...

As the exchange traded funds industry has matured, funds dubbed “thematic” have proliferated. Thematic ETFs are often industry funds targeting a newer, fast-growing segment of a traditional sector, such as cloud computing, cybersecurity or robotics. When the idea of thematic ETFs was...

While gold and the related exchange traded funds are struggling this year, some investors remain fond of the yellow metal and some ETF issuers are rewarding that faith with lower expenses. Upstart ETF issuer GraniteShares announced a new, reduced annual expense ratio for the GraniteShares Gold...

On a year-to-date basis, corporate bond exchange traded funds have been out of favor with fixed income investors amid fears of higher interest rates. Three of the top 10 ETFs in terms of 2018 outflows are corporate bond funds, including one junk bond ETF. Many investors departed high-yield...

In late September, the communication services sector officially became the 11th sector in the S&P 500. The move saw an increased weight in the S&P 500 for the group previously known as telecom, as well as some departures from the consumer discretionary and technology sectors to...

The arrival of October typically brings good tidings for domestic equities, meaning that kicking off the fourth quarter by considering some of the exchange traded funds that are already performing well this year may be a sound strategy. With growth stocks soaring again in 2018, the Schwab U.S...

The iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (NYSE: AGG), the largest U.S.-listed fixed income exchange traded fund, reached its 15th birthday Sept. 22, making it an appropriate time to examine the bond ETF boom. When AGG debuted, a scant number of bond ETFs were on the market. Today, more than 1,...

The arrival of the communication services sector becomes official later this month. It's a move that will see an array of well-known stocks in the consumer discretionary and technology sectors move to communication services. The move was previously announced by index providers MSCI...

Yet another high-level executive at Snap Inc (NYSE: SNAP) has announced their departure, and investors are once again left to wonder whether the revolving door is more a sign of management losing faith in the company or a sign the company is headed in a much-needed new direction. Another One...

With Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) ascending to the rarefied air that is the $1 trillion market capitalization club, previously occupied by just Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), examining cap-weighted consumer discretionary exchange-traded fund is timely. As Amazon's market value increases, so does...

In Hollywood, for every “Godfather II” or “Avengers: Infinity War,” there are a slew of sequels that fail to live up to the promise of the first movie or franchise installment. The world of exchange traded funds has its fair share of dud sequels, but some notable ones as...

While social media giant Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) has recouped some of its late July losses, that swoon and the stock's status as the fourth-largest member of the S&P 500 serve as reminders about some of the potential perils of cap-weighted exchange traded funds. Multi-factor ETFs eschew...