PowerShares Folds Active Pair

Kenny Rogers sang that "You gotta know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em." And the PowerShares Active Alpha Multi-Cap Fund (PQZ) and PowerShares Active AlphaQ Fund (PQY) are set for their final day of trading on Sept. 30.

"We regularly review our family of ETFs, carefully evaluating numerous factors such as investment results, length of time in the market, investor interest, and the potential for future growth," said Ben Fulton, Invesco PowerShares managing director of global ETFs. "Based on this assessment, we believe that it's in the best interest of our investors that we refocus our resources on areas that we believe are of greater client interest."

Despite edging the Nasdaq-100 and Nasdaq Composite indexes, PQY was unable to attract assets. Meanwhile, PQZ has underperformed the Total U.S. Stock Market over the past two years. Both ETFs were launched in 2008.