By Nicholas Brooks, Head of Research and Investment Strategy, ETF Securities – All good bull markets need a correction. After a twelve-year run, the gold price was well overdue a major correction and this is now taking place, albeit at a much higher velocity than its increase – as is usually the case. The silver price has been dragged down with gold, and platinum and palladium prices have been affected by China growth concerns as domestic liquidity has been squeezed. We believe the price corrections have been excessive and have returned precious metals prices to attractive long-term accumulation levels.

WisdomTree, a US-headquartered provider of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), has launched two new currency-hedged equity funds on the Nasdaq Stock Market: the WisdomTree Japan Hedged SmallCap Equity ETF (DXJS), providing exposure to small capitalisation Japanese stocks, and the WisdomTree United Kingdom Hedged Equity ETF (DXPS), providing exposure to the UK equity market. Both funds come at critical times for their respective currencies – Japanese yen and Pound sterling – relative to the dollar.

Thomson Reuters has added two new indices to its suite of real estate benchmarks developed in partnership with index specialist Global Property Research (GPR) and regional trade body Asia Pacific Real Estate Association (APREA). The Thomson Reuters GPR/APREA Investable 100 Index and Thomson Reuters GPR/APREA Investable REIT 100 Index track the performance of large, liquid developed and emerging market-focused property developers and REITs, respectively.

BlackRock’s acquisition of Credit Suisse’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs) business has formally completed, the asset manager confirmed in a statement. The acquisition cements BlackRock’s iShares platform as Europe’s leading provider of ETFs and comes just days after the UK’s Office of Fair Trading revealed that it would not be referring the acquisition to the Competition Commission. With the deal now complete, all 58 of Credit Suisse’s ETFs have been re-branded and begun trading as iShares ETFs.

Boost, a specialist provider of short and leveraged exchange-traded products (ETPs), has unveiled plans to launch the world’s first short and leveraged ETPs based on the FTSE 250 index. The FTSE 250 tracks the performance of mid-cap stocks traded on the LSE. It consists of the next 250 companies ranked by market capitalisation outside of the FTSE 100 and is seen as a more accurate barometer of the UK economy than the FTSE 100.

EDHEC-Risk Institute has taken issue with elements of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions’ (IOSCO) recently published ‘Principles for the Regulation of Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs)’. The Paris-based financial research institute broadly welcomes the guidelines put forward by the intentional securities regulator, but “deplores the timidity of the organisation’s proposals on index transparency”.

Emerging Global Advisors, a specialist provider of emerging markets-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs), has announced the launch of the EGShares Emerging Markets Dividend Growth ETF (EMDG) on the NYSE Arca. Marten Hoekstra, CEO of Emerging Global Advisors, said: “Many emerging market-based multinational companies have demonstrated their ability to increase dividends. We launched EMDG as an investment tool to enable dividend growth investors to implement their investment strategy in emerging markets and diversify dividend yield sources.”

BMO Financial Group’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs) business has enjoyed blistering growth in the four years since it was formed. Following its debut in June 2009, the Toronto-based business has grown to C$11 billion in assets under management (AUM) and 55 ETFs, offering exposure to equities, bonds and commodities.