PowerShares Debuts Sector, Niche ETFs

"We are very pleased to be working with the Amex to expand the PowerShares family of ETFs," says Bruce Bond, president of PowerShares. "The Intellidex stock selection methodology, which uses a sophisticated quantitative methodology to determine the investment merit of a company and whether it should be included in the index, is a cornerstone in our Intelligent ETF business."

Among the funds launched in October, environmentally friendly approaches seem to be a reoccurring theme. The PowerShares Cleantech Portfolio (Amex: PZD) follows an equally weighted index comprised of 75 publicly traded companies engaged in agriculture and nutrition, air quality, enabling technologies, environmental technologies, materials and nanotechnology, materials recovery and recycling, transportation and logistics, and water purification and management. The idea is to locate companies that improve energy consumption and reduce pollution; all stocks will be selected by Cleantech Capital Indices LLC.

The PowerShares WilderHill Progressive Energy Portfolio (Amex: PUW) follows along similar lines. It's an equal-weighted index composed of companies engaged in businesses that have the potential to benefit from a societal shift toward various "transitional" energy technologies significant in improving the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power. In this case, Progressive Energy Index is selecting the stocks that comprise the underlying index.

PowerShares Capital Management is an Amvescap company. As of September 29, the firm had $6.4 billion in assets under management in 48 exchange-traded funds.