ETF LAUNCH: High-Yield Municipal Bonds (HYD)
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
Van Eck Global has announced the launch of a new ETF to track the high-yield municipal bond market. This is under its Market Vectors program and is called the High-Yield Municipal Index ETF (NYX: HYD). This looks like the first ETFdesigned to track the high-yield municipal bond sector. This willallow investors to trade a basket of muni’s without having to conductdue diligence on individual bond issuers.
The ETF’s totalnet expenses are 0.35%. It is designed to track the performance of theBarclays Capital Municipal Custom High Yield Composite Index.
The index is weighted 75% in bonds with ratings under the "BBB" markfor junk bonds, and has a 25% weighting in BBB-rated bonds. Of thenon-investment grade weightings, some 31.2% are non-ratedsecurities. Some 75% of the index is in bonds issued as part oftransactions of at least $100 million in size.
As of December 31, the fund had the following sub-sector weightings inmunicipal issues: health care 21.4%, industrial development 14.7%,special tax 13.5% and airports 13.5%. Its market yield was also 9.5%rather than about 4% for the muni market as a whole.
Jon C. Ogg
February 5, 2009
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
