ETF’s Gone Wild: A Wal-Mart ETF.. Really (WSI, WMT)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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There is a ton of value that ETF’s bring to the table.  They trade like stocks, they have lower fees, they are usually more transparent, and more when you compare these to traditional mutual funds.  But sometimes ETF’s go to far and become too specific.  Enter today’s new ETF launch: FocusShares ISE-REVERE Wal-Mart Supplier Index Fund (NYSE Arca: WSI).

This ETF is meant to track the performance of the ISE-Revere Wal-Mart Supplier Index which is made up of stocks of companies that derive a substantial portion of revenue from Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT).  On this premiere trading day, we saw a whopping 2,000 shares trade.

If they are going to create ETF’s that are this focused, 24/7 Wall St. would like to suggest to Revere and FocusShares some new ETF ideas:

  • A porn ETF, after all it’s one of the biggest online segments out there;
  • An Apple-supplier ETF, after all its suppliers do actually move on new inclusions or exclusions;
  • An "SEC Stock Options Investigation" ETF for all the companies that will benefit after they get the SEC out of their offices;
  • A prison-related ETF that tracks prison REITs, security systems, and law enforcement stocks;
  • An illegal alien ETF that tracks the largest "hiring alien" companies, the companies that win off border patrol and "the fence" and we could even include the restaurants, clothing and retail chains most frequented by illegal aliens.

You get the idea.  We love most ETF’s.  Just not the notion of this one.

Jon C. Ogg
November 30, 2007

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

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.

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