StateStreet's 16 (Proposed) ETFs

Roger Nusbaum submits: Thanks to long time reader Londoner for passing along this info about what appears to be a filing for about 1500 new ETFs from StateStreet (the actual number is 16 for anyone not picking up on my humor attempt).

• SPDR S&P Asia Pacific Emerging
• SPDR S&P China
• SPDR S&P EPAC
• SPDR S&P Europe
• SPDR S&P European Emerging
• SPDR S&P Latin America
• SPDR S&P Middle East and Africa
• SPDR S&P World (ex-US)
• SPDR S&P World Small Cap (ex-US)
• streetTRACKS DJ Wilshire Global Real Estate (ex-US)
• streetTRACKS Macquarie Global Infrastructure
• streetTRACKS MSCI ACWI (ex-US)
• streetTRACKS Russell/Nomura Prime Japan
• streetTRACKS Russell/Nomura Small Cap Japan

A couple of them are not clear by the name. The EPAC is Europe, Pacific and Asia. The ACWI is the All Country World Index.

I certainly want to learn about all of them. There is no reason not to explore these. Like all big filings, there are some new and so-far innovative ideas, and some that appear to be different shades of the same color of existing ETFs.

The Africa Middle East fund owns Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, and Turkey. The European Emerging ETF owns the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Russia.

These are all clearly markets that could become important and lucrative investment destinations, some already have of course. There is no question that Africa is about as emerging as it gets. There are plenty of questions about whether or not any of your money should go there, but that is an issue for another time.

The naysayers will have their usual negative comments, but most of these markets are accessible in actively managed OEFs, so why would an indexed product be any worse. And as a recurring theme -- the funds that turn out to not have any demand will get closed.

In general, that more and more parts of the market and asset classes are available in ETFs is a positive. Yes, some of them will do poorly and some investors will do very stupid things with them, but again this is no different than OEFs, common stocks, UITs and even bonds.

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