Products May 6, 2002

ProFund Registers for ETF Series

June 5, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - ProFund Advisors filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a new series of exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Reported by

Pending SEC approval, the funds would be the first ETFs to offer investors leveraged or short exposure to index benchmarks.
 
Each of the new ETFs will seek daily investment results, before fees and expenses, which correspond to the daily performance of a specified benchmark.

Bulls and Bears

The series consists of four bullish funds and four bearish ones. The former, designed to profit when their index rises and provide twice the daily performance of their benchmarks, are:

  • Ultra500, which tracks the S&P 500
  • Ultra100, which follows Nasdaq-100 Index
  • Ultra30, which tracks the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and
  • Ultra400, which shadows the S&P MidCap 400

The remaining four funds, seeking to profit when the specified index declines and provide double the inverse of the daily performance of the index, are:

  • UltraShort500, which corresponds with the S&P 500
  • UltraShort100, which moves with the Nasdaq-100
  • UltraShort30, which follows the Dow Jones Industrial Average,
  • UltraShort400, which tracks the S&P MidCap 400

Red Tape

In addition to the registration statement, ProFund Advisors applied to the SEC for exemption from several provisions of the Investment Company Act of 1940. The offering of the ETFs managed by ProFund Advisors is contingent upon this approval, and the SEC declaring the registration statement effective.

While index-based ETFs have been available in the US market since 1992, according to a release from the company, the ETFs managed by ProFund would be the first with an objective other than that of approximating the performance of a specified index.

Read more about  Black Box: Exchange Traded Funds

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