The ETF landscape just keeps getting bigger. In March, Rydex Investments launched six funds and First Trust Advisors added one.
The Rydex ETFs will track S&P/Citigroup Pure Style indexes, which focus on stocks that exhibit strong growth or value characteristics. The S&P 500, the S&P Mid Cap 400 and the S&P Small Cap 600 are divided into sub-indexes designed to track the growth and value portions of each index. Each Pure Style index contains approximately one-third of the market cap of the parent index. In an attempt to eliminate size bias, stocks within each Pure Style index are weighted according to their style scores rather than cap-weighted.
"ETFs continue to gain in popularity," according to Tim Meyer, business manager for ETFs at Rydex Investments. "Financial intermediaries and their clients continue to find these products useful in building diversified portfolios and we are committed to bringing useful and innovative ETFs to the marketplace to offer new choices in the implementation of investment portfolios."
Rydex entered the ETF marketplace in 2003 with the Rydex S&P Equal Weight fund (Amex: rsp). The firm also manages a group of specialized mutual funds that utilize leverage and short strategies.
First Trust's Morningstar Dividend Leaders (Amex: fdl) is composed of the top 100