Yeah they are out of the ETF business. Instead they will focus on closed end funds exclusively.
I can just imagine how it went. Some big wig hurriedly calling people in for a brainstorming session. "We need to greatly reduce our web traffic and do it soon! Give me ideas people."
Then after toiling away for hours someone hits the motherlode. "Let's scrap any and all involvement with the investment product that has the growth in new products, assets and investor interest and instead focus on the antiquated product that is becoming more and more obsolete as time goes on!"
"Tell me more" the boss might have said.
"Look, its like movies. No one watches movies on VCR cassettes any more they watch on DVD or blu-ray or on-demand, some people even stream movies. If we want less traffic on our website we have to only provide information on the VCR cassette of investment products; the closed end fund!"
"Excellent Smithers, excellent."My characterization of CEFs as being antiquated might be unfair but in terms of growth there is no comparison. ETFs have left CEFs in the dust and that will continue for years to come. According to a link I found from ICI the total assets in equity closed end funds as of June 30 was $77 billion. Yesterday the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) closed with assets of $71 billion. The total assets in all closed end funds came in at $201 billion.
I find this to be baffling beyond belief. They had built one of the premier sites for ETF information. I cannot recall a website chucking what had worked in this manner. Yes the site is owned by closed end fund titan Nuveen but they called the site ETFConnect and built something very substantial.
25 comments:
ETF connect is owned by Nuveen ( I think)...they do closed-ends...not sure if they do ETFs or not.
Bad news indeed. I was a frequent user of the site and have sworn off CEFs, so I've no reason to return (and anyway, there's CEFA.) I imagine it was pretty labor intensive to collect the detail that they posted, but it was invaluable for looking under the hood, to use your phrase.
Other than single-proveder sites, perhaps your readers can suggest some suitable alternatives. Maybe this is a business opportunity; I've got $10 in profits from ECH that I can chip in :)
Maybe they are trying to make, or live out, a Dilbert cartoon:
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/
I couldn't agree with you more. I was as incredulous as you were. I'm a financial advisor at Merrill Lynch and used them daily. I would have paid a decent amount of money in subscriptions for the right to use etfconnect. Nuveen has to be viewed as a bunch of complete idiots. I will never use a Nuveen mutual or closed-end fund because of this. Someone with brains could easily create the same exact website, call it ETFinfo, and get all the traffic from etfconnect.
And by the way, I was also surprised not to see a lot of complaints about this. Your column was the only one I saw. I'm sure we'll hear more about this.
Bill B,
"in bocca al lupo" for your mortgage. Your response "crepi".
Best,
Jeff from Milan
Hey Jeff, thanks so much.
My immediate thought is follow the money. Traffic / reputation does not necessarily mean dollars. IIRC, this is a 'free' resource and it's hard to see what monetary benefit they're deriving from it. If it made money, it would've been sold, right? So my guess is that it's not making money and costs are going up.
When confused, follow the money, right?
Does "closed-end' in this case pertain to information traveling to their brain?
First, I found ETFConnect hard to use because the search tools were clumsy: I might want to find an ETF, and get a bunch of CEF results. But by the same token, the search tools on Schwab and most public sites are lousy for ETFs, too. The best I've got for category searches is Seeking Alpha [http://seekingalpha.com/page/etf-finder], but it lacks any details or links back to the detailed product information. Why is this so hard?
Second, as a CEF investor, I'm thrilled at the conveniences featured by the new site, and will use it daily. Nuveen has always been a class act for CEF management.
That said, we still need a good ETF info site.
Maybe the big providers-- Invesco, iShares, SPDR, et al -- could pool their resources and set something up. Or one of the many sites that claims to track and evaluate ETFs could find ways to patch in under-the-hood information and links— that is, the best features of ETFConnect— and become a highly valued destination instead of just another commentary.
Here's a question, would anyone pay a nominal fee to use a site like ETFConnect (with a better layout and nicer search)? I'm thinking sub $10 per month (or maybe $50 per yr). I ask the question, but I don't know that I would. I seem to need it once in awhile, but not all of the time. Then again, I'm not a pro either.
Bill B--I probably wouldn't either. I think something like the Morningstar model might work for them, though. Get some basics with free registration, and the whole kit and kaboodle for a fee.
I agree their their search feature was clumsy; I never could make it work well.
I sent them an email, asking that they reconsider (like that will matter.) Maybe if enough pros howl, though, they'll listen.
the reply i received was essentially what i found on the website
Thought this site might help:
http://etfdb.com/2009/top-50-free-online-etf-tools/
www.etfdesk.com
good site to search, screen, and research ETFs
Well Mr. ETFdesk.com, please add the features from ETFconnect.com, and then I'll revisit your site.
So many cookie-cutter sites offer the same lousy information. They're built for stocks and treat ETFs as such. ETFconnect had a great presentation of premium/discount, country and sector breakdowns. It couldn't be that hard, yet nobody has it together like they did.
http://etfdb.com
I'v used this a bit. I'm just getting into etf's, so I'm not able to judge this site relative to others. I did a cross check on PIMCO's infation protected bond offerings using the search feature, and it missed STPZ. Not a good sign........
there is so much lack of transparency with closed end funds, maybe they can do a better job of making it easier to do your due diligence. One thing I noticed was the recent data on earnings and distributions. If you know a fund is earning the distribution and what the ROC is, that's a big plus. I don't really care if they don't do ETF's, I'd rather just have a really good CE website.
Not sure if this helps, but I've found this site useful. The design is pretty bad, but the search is well laid out.
http://etf.stock-encyclopedia.com/
pros will not "howl" about it...we have bloombergs....I suggest making an excel sheet with links to fat pages...maybe someone can do that and share with the class
MY BAD..."FACT PAGES"
www.etfdesk.com has embedded factsheets
I used ETFConnect about 70% to research closed end funds (mainly looking for interesting discount to NAV) and about 30% for looking at ETFs. So far though, I haven't noticed any benefit to the new site in terms of CEF info, so the change seems to be only a negative. IMO, they probably wanted to change the name to CEFConnect for identity/marketing reasons and just made a bunch of other bad decisions in the process of doing that.
ETF Connect had really nice snapshot of recent dividend distributions. This info is now hard to find at one site. Have to now to hunt around for this on sponsor sites.
Hey Roger, Your take about the exec's makes me laugh. FYI, ETFguide.com has a decent database with good snapshots and performance history. Still misses some of the great features of ETFconnect.com, but it's worth checking out.
http://www.etfguide.com/advance_search.php
Hi, I never used ETF Connect before, but for my own investing I created a small tool called ETF Finder. It allows you to enter 1 or more stocks and finds ETFs with that holding. So if you are interested in lets say Google and Ford you could enter GOOG and F and find which ETFs hold the most of those stocks. I'd like to keep this tool up and running so if you like it please tell a friend.
http://finance.apsquared.net
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