3 Interesting New ETFs Begin Trading

With earnings season in full swing, the release of new ETFs can often be buried under a deluge of company announcements.  However, several interesting new products have recently hit the market that will offer investors unique and diversified exposure in a variety of sectors.

Well-known mutual fund company Calamos Investments recently launched their first foray into the ETF world with an actively managed fund dubbed the Calamos Focus Growth ETF (CFGE). This ETF will invest in a concentrated basket of blue-chip stocks that the managers research team believes will deliver long-term growth for shareholders.

The underlying analysis behind CFGE will focus on companies with attractive fundamentals that include accelerated earnings and solid returns on investment capital.  The net expense ratio of this fund is currently listed at 0.90 percent. 

The Sprott Gold Miners ETF (SGDM) is another equity-focused strategy designed to select 25 gold mining stocks with the highest beta to the spot price of gold bullion.  The underlying companies in this global ETF are weighted according to their revenue growth and other balance sheet qualities.  

Canada currently makes up over 75 percent of the country allocation in SGDM and it will charge an annual expense ratio of 0.57 percent.  

This new ETF will compete with the well established MarketVectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX), which has $8 billion in assets under management.  However, Sprott has several other precious metals bullion-oriented ETFs in its arsenal that should make this a good complimentary fit.

Finally, the newly released Barclays Women In Leadership ETN (WIL) is designed to track a basket of stocks with a female chief executive officer or at least 25 percent of the board of directors governed by women.  This includes stocks such as Pepsi Co (PEP) and International Business Machines (IBM).

An exchange-traded note is a debt instrument issued by a bank such as Barclays with the promise to track a specific basket of underlying assets.  In the case of WIL, the underlying stocks will focus on the benefits of women in leadership roles to promote gender equality.