Busy Week for New ETF Offerings

February 22, 2008

SAN DIEGO (ETFguide.com) - Despite this year's lackluster start for global stock market indexes, the pace of new exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has remained steady.

This week gave birth to three new ETFs from RevenueShares Investor Services.

Instead of weighting stocks in Standard & Poor's indexes by market capitalization, the company will weight them according to corporate annual revenue.

The fund's are the RevenueShares Large Cap Fund (Ticker: RWL), the RevenueShares Mid Cap Fund (Ticker: RWK) and the RevenueShares Small Cap Fund (Ticker: RWJ).

“For investors using an S&P Index as a benchmark, RevenueShares ETFs deliver the benefits of a passively managed index investment with the upside potential of weighting the S&P Indexes by revenue,” said RevenueShares Investor Services’ President, Sean O’Hara. “Backtesting performed by S&P has indicated that a revenue-weighted ranking has historically provided significantly better long term returns versus traditional cap-weighted indexes.”

Also, New York-based WisdomTree Investments launched the WisdomTree India Earnings Fund (Ticker: EPI). The fund is designed to track the performance of approximately 150 Indian companies and is the first ETF to offer pure exposure to local Indian securities.

In related news, five exchange-traded notes (ETNs) from ELEMENTS were introduced. The notes are linked to the spot currency price of the Australian Dollar, British Pound, Canadian Dollar, Euro, and Swiss Franc.

Also launched was the Lehman Brothers Opta S&P Private Equity ETN (Ticker: PPE), which is designed to track the performance of 30 leading private equity companies included in the S&P Listed Private Equity Index Net Return Index.

In December 2007, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service issued an adverse tax ruling on currency linked ETNs stating that interest is taxable income even if investors don't sell their note. The IRS is expected to rule on the tax treatment of ETNs linked to commodities and stocks.

ETNs are debt instruments that pay a return linked to the performance of a single security or index.

• EUR/USD Exchange Rate ETN (Ticker: ERE)

• CHF/USD Exchange Rate ETN (Ticker: SZE)

• CAD/USD Exchange Rate ETN (Ticker: CUD)

• AUD/USD Exchange Rate ETN (Ticker: ADE)

• GBP/USD Exchange Rate ETN (Ticker: EGB)