ETFs Walking Softly With Big AUM Hauls

The number of exchange-traded products with $100 million or more in assets under management is on the rise. In January 2011 a combined 304 ETFs and ETNs had crossed that lofty AUM mark. At the end of January 2012, the number had surged to 514, according to data from the ETF Industry Association. Believe it or not, it is possible for an ETF or ETN with over $100 million in AUM to go unnoticed. Maybe those are the breaks when the ten largest U.S. ETFs by assets combine for over a third of all ETF and ETN assets. We'll leave that to the critics to decide, but we can tell you that while it's possible for a $100 million AUM ETF to live an incognito existence, it's also possible for much larger funds to go unnoticed. Here are few worth considering. iShares S&P Global Energy Sector Index Fund IXC We admit to having mixed emotions about this ETF but the fact of the matter is IXC doesn't grab a lot of attention. The other irrefutable fact is that this ETF had almost $1.2 billion in AUM as of the close of U.S. markets on February 13, according to data on the iShares Web site. Market Vectors RVE Hard Assets Producers ETF HAP It's interesting that ETFs heavy on the world's largest energy and materials companies go unnoticed, but as is the case with IXC, that's what has happened with HAP. This Market Vectors offering has its uses though. Home to almost $185 million in AUM, HAP is an ideal ETF for taking a temperature check on how on risk on really is. WisdomTree Emerging Markets Equity Income Fund DEM And the winner of the award for largest multi-country emerging markets ETF that no one talks about is...the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Equity Income Fund. This isn't your standard multi-country EM ETF. China is only the tenth-largest country weight. Russia receives a smaller allocation than Argentina and Czech Republic to name two and India is nowhere to be found. All of that is OK with investors because DEM has over $3.1 billion in AUM and is up almost 11% year-to-date. iShares High Dividend Equity Fund HDV The iShares High Dividend Equity Fund won't celebrate its first birthday until late March, but this ETF has soared up the AUM charts in short order. This ultra conservative play has hauled in almost $1.2 billion in AUM since its March 2011 debut. PowerShares Dynamic Oil & Gas Services Portfolio PXJ PXJ certainly has some widely known rivals courtesy of iShares and Market Vectors, but the PowerShares offering compares favorably with those funds. While those other ETFs may be bigger and more heavily traded, PXJ has almost $170 million in AUM, so this ETF isn't going anywhere anytime soon. A move above horizontal resistance at $22 could put PXJ in rally mode.