Webinars for Financial Professionals

Morningstar ETF experts Hortense Bioy, Jose Garcia-Zarate, Al Kellett and Gordon Rose will answer all your ETF questions, no matter how big or small. Submit your questions in advance at ETFQueries@morningstar.com or live on the day via the BrightTALK webinar platform. We’ve already got a list of your questions to address, including how dividends are treated in ETFs and what impact this could have on performance; what costs are associated with ETFs beyond the total expense ratio; how to tell how actively traded an ETF is; and how to decide which ETF to buy when faced with several products tracking the same index.

Smart beta strategies have gained a lot of attention in recent years, and more and more smart beta ETFs are being launched in Europe. This live panel discussion between Morningstar analysts and users of smart beta strategies will address these questions:
What exactly are these alternative beta strategies?
Are they better than the traditional market cap-weighted approach or just different?
What are the pitfalls?
How can these strategies be integrated into one’s investment process?

The agenda will be to define the terms Tracking Error and Tracking Difference and talk about why they are important; to present the results of our study into the tracking efficiency of a sample of ETFs; and introduce a new Morningstar data point for measuring tracking efficiency, Estimated Holding Cost.

•A Round-Up of Where Assets Flowed in 2012
•Regulatory Changes for the ETP Industry
•Consolidation and Closures in the ETP Industry
•Expectations for the ETP Industry in 2013

•How we got to a low-yield world
•Income, not for its own sake
•Theory of yield relativity: why the highest-yielding investments don’t pay
•What’s cheap, what’s not

•Why corporate and HY have become the fixed income flavour of the year
•The outlook and the risks
•Exploring the ETF menu

Why even consider the alternatives?
Why use ETFs to access alternative asset classes?
Exploring the menu of alternative asset classes accessible via the ETF wrapper:
- Commodities
- Currencies
- Property
- Hedge Funds

- Examining the benefits and risks of securities lending
- What safeguards are put in place to protect investors?
- How much of your physical ETF is out on loan?
- Due diligence checklist

•Are commodities a diversification goldmine?
•Examining the sources of commodity returns
•Are some commodity indices better than others?
•Tips for transacting in commodity ETPs

The macro review
Would Spain be better off outside the Euro?
Investment opportunities