ETFs see record inflows first half of 2017
Records fell everywhere in the first half of 2017, with ETFs seeing $247 billion inflows - the highest yet for a six-month period. Meat and potatoes ETFs, like the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 funds still garner the most assets, but international and emerging market funds are receiving big money too.
Chinese ETFs: good but expensive
China's economy is booming, so how are the ETFs offering exposure to it doing? The area is dominated by iShares and SPDRs. Chinese ETFs also tend to be more expensive, due to higher trading costs. They also mostly offer exposure to the same companies: the BAT - Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, as well as the Chinese banks. But they've been performing well.
ETFs and diversification
The success of ETFs' indexing strategies is based on extreme diversification. They allow investors to ignore whether banking will outperform mining, or whatever else. But how, then, do sector ETFs, like the ISE Cyber Security ETF, make sense?
