LISTED PRODUCT NEWS
THREE ETFS TRACKING FRENCH CAC 40
Three new exchange-traded funds listed in Paris yesterday, all tracking the French blue-chip CAC 40. Comstage ETF launched the products on behalf of its parent company Commerzbank. The ComStage ETF CAC 40 aims to track the performance of the underlying index and charges an annual fee of 0.20 per cent; the short ETF tracks the CAC 40 Short index for an annual fee of 0.35 per cent, while the leverage ETF has the CAC 40 Leverage index (which doubles the exposure to the CAC 40) as an underlying and has a fee of 0.30 per cent.
NEW TRACKERS LAUNCHED BY RBS
The exciting but risky world of frontier markets has been opened up further to retail investors. Royal Bank of Scotland has recently launched its Frontier Markets Tracker, which is linked to the MSCI Frontier Markets Net TR Index. This underlying index consists of 183 stocks across 25 different countries, including Kuwait, Bulgaria and Ukraine. RBS also now offers its UK Accelerated Tracker 3, which gives investors the opportunity to gain at maturity two times any positive gain in the FTSE 100. The tracker gives a maximum payout of £300 per certificate held.
CHINA ENTERS COMMODITY ETF WORLD
Further evidence of China’s unsatiable appetite for raw materials was presented yesterday when it made its first investments in commodity-related ETFs. The country’s sovereign wealth fund became the fourth-largest investor in the US Oil ETF while it emerged earlier this week that that China Investment Corporation (CIC) – a state-owned investment institution – has taken a stake of 1.45m shares in the SPDR Gold Trust, the largest physically-backed ETF. The stake is worth about $155.6m, or 0.4 per cent of the fund’s assets.