Exchange-Traded Funds

With Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) sponsors constantly making new types of ETFs available, there is now a variety of ETFs that provide investors with an opportunity to develop diversified investment portfolios. Their sophistication has also grown to include a breed of ETFs that do not passively track the performance of an underlying index. With this assortment of newer ETFs, and more on the way, market strategists are now capable of devising all-ETF portfolios based on a multitude of asset allocation schemes that respond to the need of their clients.   This book provides a comprehensive overview of the changes brought about by ETFs. It describes and analyses recent changes alongside their impact on investment portfolios, and discusses the continuing success of index-based ETFs and the reasons underlying their long-lasting achievements. The book offers an objective discourse on the newly minted smart beta ETFs and some of the issues surrounding them, and provides an overview of how the increasingly widespread ETF-based portfolio hedging strategies are constructed and implemented.Paying particular attention to the importance of asset allocation and the essential role it plays in portfolio construction, this book explores the role played by ETFs in changing investors’ attitudes toward home bias, covering both established and emerging frontier markets. The author leverages his extensive background to integrate best professional practices and academic rigor for an increased understanding of the ever-evolving world of ETFs.

Dr. A. Seddik Meziani is a tenured professor offinance at Montclair State University in New Jersey, USA, and former chair ofthe department of Economics, Finance, and Real Estate. He is also theSoliciting Editor of The Journal of IndexInvesting and a member of the Research Advisory Board of ETF Global, LLC,an independent advisory firm that offers investment decision support, research,and risk analytics focusing on exchange-traded funds. He previously worked forStandard & Poor’s and TIAA-CREF. He received a PhD from Rensselaer PolytechnicInstitute and an MBA from New York University, USA.   Dr. Meziani’sexpertise covers exchange-traded funds, micro- and small-caps andemerging/frontier markets. His extensive work on ETFs was acknowledged on aworldwide list of “Seventeen ETF Friendly Professors” compiledby Yahoo Finance. He has beenregularly featured on the ETF speaking circuit since 2000 and has served as a speaker, panelmoderator, and panelliston a wide range of ETF topics at several ETF conferences, both in the UnitedStates and internationally. He is extensively published in both academic and practitionerjournals and is the author of two ETF books: Exchange-Traded Funds as an Investment Option (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005)and Exchange-Traded Funds: Conceptual andPractical Investment Approaches (Risk Books, 2009).