USA
Cushing comes over to ETFs
Cushing Asset Management, a Texas-based asset manager that is famous in the ETF industry from providing master limited partnership (“MLPs”) indexes for ETNs, is jumping over the fence and listing a series of MLP ETFs.
All the ETFs are built more or less the same way. They start by taking Cushing’s own Cushing 30 MLP Index, then smoosh it together with another index from either S&P or Dow Jones. Companies and MLPs in each product are chosen and weighted based on current yield. Weighting for each company is capped at 6% with a minimum constituent weight of 1%. The total weight of all MLP constituents is capped at 24% at rebalancing. The Indexes are rebalanced quarterly.
XLEY will smash the Cushing 30 together with the S&P 500 Energy Index.
XLUY does much the same but with utilities companies from the S&P 500 Utility Index.
XLTY takes the Dow Jones Transportation Average.
XLSY uses both the S&P 500 Energy Index and the S&P 500 Materials Index.
DWS ESG ACWI ex-USA (how’s that for alphabet soup?)
DWS is listing a new ESG ETF (who isn’t these days?) that tracks companies from all countries in the world excluding the United States. The Xtrackers MSCI ACWI ex USA ESG Leaders Equity ETF (ACSG) will track an index from MSCI, which is made froim “regional indexes that provide exposure to large- and medium-capitalization companies from developed and emerging markets countries (excluding the United States),” the prospectus says.
The Index will use MSCI’s fabled ESG screening criteria to pick the corporate goodies from the bad. If MSCI dubs a company to be too much of a baddy it will be dumped from the index. At the time of writing the index has 902 stocks in it with Japan taking 15% of the index.