Products June 22, 2007

S&P Authorizes BRIC Index for New SSgA ETF

June 22, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Standard & Poor's has licensed State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) to create and launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) based upon its S&P BRIC 40 Index.
Reported by

The SSgA ETF commenced trading Friday on the American Stock Exchange (see State Street Offers BRIC ETF).

Standard & Poor’s also issued a white paper on the economic and investing rationales for considering investment allocations to Brazil, Russia, India and China. The report, ” BRIC Markets: Investment Rationale, Risks and Access Options ,” can be found  HERE .

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Index Designs

According to a press release, the S&P BRIC 40 Index is designed to offer tradable exposure to leading stocks from four emerging markets: Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). The index, launched in May 2006, uses what S&P describes as “an innovative design to ensure replicability and diversification.”   

All stocks in the S&P BRIC 40 index are constituents of the S&P/IFC Investable (S&P/IFCI) index series, a family of emerging market indices that measures the return of stocks that are legally and practically available for foreign investment.

Products June 21, 2007

MainStay Unveils Three 130/30 Fund Offerings

June 21, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - MainStay Investments has created three 130/30 mutual funds, according to a news release.
Reported by

The company said the three funds are based on the quantitative institutional strategies managed by New York Life Investment Management’s Equity Investors Group (EIG). The MainStay 130/30 Core Fund and the MainStay 130/30 Growth Fund will be available on June 29 while the MainStay 130/30 International Fund can be purchased starting August 31.

“We believe these three funds allow advisers to bring a deeper dimension to their client’s traditional equity style box. By helping to maximize the untapped potential of a client’s portfolio, 130/30 funds may be a useful adviser-driven vehicle that can help investors achieve their financial objectives,” said Mike Coffey, managing director and head of distribution at MainStay Investments, in the announcement.

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A 130/30 fund is an equity fund benchmarked to an index that invests 130% of its assets in long positions and 30% of its assets are sold short. The proceeds from the short sales are used to fund the purchase of the additional 30% of the long positions.

Through short selling and applying modest amounts of leverage, 130/30 strategies have the potential to generate higher information ratios than traditional active long-only strategies and may be able to achieve higher returns for the same amount of risk relative to the benchmark, according to the news release.

More information is at  http://www.nylim.com/mainstayfunds .

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