Gold, loved by many and disdained by at least a few (including Warren Buffett) is an unusual investment. It won’t grow, doesn’t offer a dividend, and other than jewelry and some industrial uses it gets stuck in guarded vaults for safe keeping. With no positive cash flow associated with it, the value of gold is whatever the market says it is. In the past …
In February 2012 VelocityShares‘ TVIX ETN was on a tear. Its volume surged from an average of 6.67 million shares a day in January to 22 million shares a day in February. The assets under management (AUM) also grew dramatically. At the end of January TVIX had $413 million in assets—fourteen days later it has $279 million more for a total of $691.0 million. Credit …
SPDR’s DIA Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF went ex-dividend February 17th with a dividend of $0.3315—about 0.25% of its current price of $129. The dividend will be distributed March 12th. For DIA’s 2012 dividend calendar see this post. DIA is currently yielding around 2.3% on an annualized basis. Unlike most funds that distribute monthly dividends, DIA does not go ex-dividend on the first business day …
Barclays had the short term volatility ETF space to itself from January 2009 until November 2010 with their VXX long and XXV short ETNs. On November 30th, 2010 VelocityShares came on the scene with three new short term funds: 1X long VIIX , 2X long TVIX, and -1X daily inverse XIV. Fifteen months later, on February 14th, the combined daily volume of these VelocityShares ETNs …
IRAs are attractive to investors because they enable taxes on dividends and profits to be deferred (traditional IRA) or avoided (Roth). To a large degree, you can do the same trades in an IRA that you can do in your regular accounts. However there are significant differences, and the differences change over time as brokers adjust their policies and their software. I’ve tried …
