Four New Dividend ETFs To Love...Maybe

The pace of new ETF introductions has slowed over the past couple of months, but the year-to-date total of roughly 200 is still pretty impressive. Within that group have been a fair amount of new funds devoted to the timeless theme of dividends. With the yield on the 30-year Treasury laboring around lows not seen in five or six decades and cash investments doing not much beyond collecting dust, dividends remain a critical part of investors' portfolios. Fortunately, the concept of dividend ETFs continues to boom within the ETF arena. Today, we'll take a look at a few of our favorite dividend ETFs that have come to market in 2011. That's our only stipulation: That the fund was introduced this year. In no particular order... iShares High Dividend Equity Fund HDV: We've recently praised the iShares High Divided Equity Fund for attracting nearly $302 million in assets under management since its late March debut. Home to nearly 80 stocks and a 0.4% expense ratio, HDV holds a lot of the usual dividend suspects. So we won't lie to you and say this fund does something that no other ETF does. That's not true, but in terms of new ETFs of any kind, HDV is off to a fine start. Global X SuperDividend ETF SDIV: The Global X SuperDividend ETF made its debut in early June. That won't win any awards for good timing, but the ETF has still managed to attract $30.5 million in AUM. The expense ratio is on the higher side of what is typically found in the dividend ETF realm, but the SDIV's concept is unique. One hundred equally weighted stocks with almost a quarter of the sector weight going to REITs. There's more to like than dislike with SDIV, which is heavy on developed markets exposure. Guggenheim ABC High Dividend ETF ABCS: Another one we've talked about recently, the Guggenheim ABC High Dividend ETF made its debut around the same time as SDIV and has attracted $6.2 million in AUM. When it comes to sector diversity, it's hard to beat ABCS. Six sectors (consumer discretionary, utilities, telecom, materials, consumer staples and industrials) get double-digit weights. On the down side, the country allocation is too heavily weighted to Brazil (51%) to be of benefit in this market environment. IndexIQ US Real Estate Small Cap ETF ROOF: ROOF is just a few days younger than ABCS and SDIV. The 40-stock ETF's expense ratio of 0.69% is high, but check out the juicy 6.18% yield. ROOF is also diverse as six sub-industries of the REIT world get double-digit allocations.