Tuesday, April 25, 2006

First trust launches two ETFs with no publicity. QQEW and QTEC

QQQ Lovers can now get an even greater fix on the Nasdaq 100 with the launch of two new ETF from First Trust covering this index in different ways. Of these I think QQEW is most useful for investing, but both of these will probably be used by speculators. I have no explanation for why First trust isn't giving this any publicity.

TheFirst Trust NASDAQ-100 Equal Weight Index Fund (QQEW) is an exchange-traded fund designed to replicate the holdings and weightings of the NASDAQ-100 Equal Weighted Index. Given how the S&P 500 Equal Weight (RSP) has knocked the socks off the market cap weighted S&P 500 index (SPY), this might be interesting. A long/short combinations of QQQ and QQEW could be used to capture deflation/inflation of valuations in the NASDAQ.

The First Trust NASDAQ-100 Technology Index Fund (QTEC) is an exchange-traded fund designed to replicate the NASDAQ-100 Technology Sector Index: an equal weighted index based on only the technology stocks in the NASDAQ 100. This could in theory be combined with QQEW to create a synthetic NASDAQ 100 ex-Tech index.

Two New Exchange Traded Funds Based on NASDAQ Indexes Are Launched