Trend: A new family of ETFs, providing short exposure to well-known market indexes, gives investors more flexibility to profit from corrections in the stock market.
ProShares is a subsidiary of the ProFunds Group, which manages ProFunds mutual funds, the nation's largest lineup of indexed mutual funds.
Link: ProShares.com: Homepage News
ProShares, together with The American Stock Exchange® (Amex®), today [June 21, 2006] announced the launch of eight new innovative exchange traded funds (ETFs) designed to make it easier for investors to get short or magnified exposure to an index.
Four Short ProShares are the first ETFs designed to provide short exposure to well-known market indexes, seeking daily investment results that correspond to the inverse of those indexes, before fees and expenses. Four Ultra ProShares are the first ETFs designed to magnify daily index performance. They seek daily investment results that correspond to twice the performance of their underlying indexes, before fees and expenses.
The Amex® and ProShares also anticipate launching four UltraShort ProShares ETFs that will seek daily investment results that correspond to twice the inverse of their underlying indexes before fees and expenses. These ETFs are not yet available.
"We look at ProShares as the start of a whole new chapter in the development of ETFs," said Michael Sapir, CEO of ProShare Advisors, Inc., part of ProFunds Group. "By providing built-in short and magnified exposure to the indexes, ProShares make it much easier to execute a number of powerful strategies. In times like these, when the markets haven't necessarily offered a lot of help, we've seen investors interested in pursuing more sophisticated strategies—for example, hedging to manage risk. Now, to execute that strategy, they no longer have to go through the process of setting up margin accounts or covering margin calls—they can simply trade ProShares."
Names of ProShares, their objectives and ticker symbols:
Short ProShares Fund Name Daily Objective* Ticker Symbol (NAV) Short QQQ® ProShares Inverse of the NASDAQ-100 Index® PSQ
Short S&P500® ProShares Inverse of the S&P 500® Index SH
Short Dow30SM ProShares Inverse of the Dow Jones Industrial AverageSM DOG
Short MidCap400 ProShares Inverse of the S&P MidCap 400 MYY
Ultra ProShares Fund Name Daily Objective* Ticker Symbol (NAV) Ultra QQQ ProShares Double the NASDAQ-100 Index QLD
Ultra S&P500 ProShares Double the S&P 500 Index SSO
Ultra Dow30 ProShares Double the Dow Jones Industrial Average DDM
Ultra MidCap400 ProShares Double the S&P MidCap 400 MVV
Disclosure: I may own ProShares at any given time.
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