Global Investor: Zurich’s Fund Fair 2010…Jim Rogers….and a Blizzard of New ETFs

Eric Roseman (February 5, 2010)

Zurich, Switzerland

It’s always interesting to visit the Fund Fair in Zurich, or Funds 2010 as this year’s event is called.

Each year in early February some of the most prominent traditional and alternative asset managers attend this investment show, including some great speakers. Later this afternoon I’ll be hearing Jim Rogers on commodities – one of my favorites.

Held at the Kongresshaus in Zurich – located across the street from beautiful Lake Zurich – Funds 2010 offers more index-linked providers than last year.

Indexing, of course, is now all the rage over the last several years. ETFs have sprouted almost everywhere while many hedge funds and mutual funds were closing their doors. Though not a panacea by any means, ETFs do offer low fees and, generally, higher liquidity than mutual funds and basically cover almost every investment sector you can imagine.

But one of the great unsung advantages of the European ETF industry is that unlike those in the United States, which are denominated in U.S. dollars, most European ETFs are valued in EUR and some in Swiss francs and British pounds. You’re no longer limited to strictly dollar-based ETFs.

This year, I’ve noticed that Germany’s Commerzbank has entered the ETF business with a new offering called ComStage ETFs…

One of Germany’s largest banks, Commerzbank (bailed-out by Berlin in late 2008) now offers 62 ETFs, mostly based on the MSCI or Morgan Stanley Capital International indices with fees ranging from 0.25% to 0.60% per annum.

One of the more interesting ETFs offered by ComStage is the Dow Jones EURO STOXX 50 Leveraged Fund, or betting against European stocks with two times leverage. There’s also a regular short ETF with no leverage, or the Dow Jones EURO STOXX 50 Short TR. Expenses run at 0.35% annually for these reverse-index ETFs.

Germany’s biggest bank, Deutsche Bank AG, is also a major player in the ETF business and has been for much longer than Commerzbank.

Called DB X-Trackers, the Deutsche Bank products offer the widest selection of fixed-income ETFs, including products that bet against credit spreads. Though I highly doubt a Euro-zone member will default because Germany and other EMU countries would come to the rescue (or the IMF for that matter), the markets have been growing edgy lately and rightly concerned about the skyrocketing amount of debt being accumulated by sovereign governments since 2008.

The iTraxx Crossover 5 Year Short TR Index bets against the popular Markit index of Credit Default Swaps (CDS). Until recently, credit spreads hit fresh pre-September 2008 lows but have since ratcheted higher since January as default fears continue to grow in the Euro-zone. DB charges only 0.24% for this strategy.

Apart from the ETF offerings, it’s pretty much “same old, same old” for other companies. Most mutual funds and hedge fund groups all show impressively devised charts of performance in fact sheet format and all of them sport the same massive breakdown in 2008. Most funds lost 40% or more in 2008 – so individual investors definitely weren’t alone.

I’m heading out to hear Jim Rogers… more on that later…