Hybrid mutual fund-ETF: Terrific investment or a turkey? mutual, investment

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摘要：本月早些时候，美国证券交易委员会批准通过Eaton Vance Asset Management关于创建exchange-traded managed funds(ETMFs)的申请。并且有可能在明年年中创造出一个新的投资品牌NextShares。

全文如下：

The “next great investment product” finally has passed muster with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The question now is whether it will pass the sniff test of investors and advisers when it comes to market next year.

Earlier this month, the SEC approved an Eaton Vance Asset Management request to create “exchange-traded managed funds,” (ETMFs); in due time — likely the middle of next year — this will lead to the creation of NextShares, a new brand of investment that will manage, market and sell the new investment types. Eaton Vance currently plans to introduce 18 flavors of the new EMTFs when NextShares rolls out.

NextShares is interesting, different and intriguing, but it may not be what investors were actually expecting when they heard that actively managed exchange-traded funds were in the offing.

This is a case where something that looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck could be a swan … or a turkey.

To see why, let’s consider what the SEC approved, and also what it turned down.

While the public will see NextShares as if they are a “new type of ETF,” that’s not quite true. For starters, exchange-traded funds are mutual funds built to trade like stocks, trading minute-by-minute instead of being priced at the end of the day. Typically, they’re based on indexes, although there are a few actively managed issues like PIMCO Total Return BOND, -0.05%  , as well as active-index and leveraged issues.

ETFs make daily portfolio disclosures — meaning the investor knows what they own — and typically have lower costs and are more tax-efficient than traditional funds.

Eaton Vance EV, -0.80%   is not the first company to want to start an active product; in October, the agency shot down applications by Precidian ETFs Trust and Spruce ETF Trust — the latter a unit of BlackRock BLK, -0.45%   — to offer active ETFs that were not transparent.

Active fund managers are reluctant to enter the ETF space mostly because of the transparency issue, worried that market sharpies would be able to develop algorithms to predict what the funds are likely to do next, and to then front-run those funds, buying or selling ahead in anticipation of the manager’s moves. That would make it harder for the active managers to get the best prices when they see opportunities.

Beyond Eaton Vance, BlackRock and Precidian, T. Rowe Price TROW, +0.00%   and State Street STT, +0.03%   have filed with the SEC trying to get approval for non-transparent active offerings.

What makes the Eaton Vance deal different is that unlike the other proposals, it does not offer minute-by-minute trading at the net asset value of the fund. Instead, market makers will buy or sell shares based on the “proxy price,” which represents the fund’s end-of-the-day net asset value, plus or minus a few pennies. Investors can execute a trade at, say, 11:24 a.m., but their price will not quite be the actual net asset value at that moment.

Here’s the thing: the difference between an ETF and an ETMF is more than one letter in the acronym. It’s that ETMFs don’t trade at net asset value, aren’t transparent, and aren’t expected to be quite as low-cost or tax-efficient.

Eaton Vance officials can’t say much about NextShares at the moment — they’re in a mandated quiet period with the approval having been granted — but when they start talking and marketing the new issues, they’re going to have to educate the public as to why this form of fund is the one to pick.

“Kudos to Eaton Vance to getting this done, but look closely and you realize that this is not a mutual fund and it’s not an ETF,” said Todd Rosenbluth, Director of ETF & Mutual Fund Research at S&P Capital IQ. “Because it’s something new, it might get investor interest, but it also has to prove itself.”

Active management is a tough sell these days in general, as the bull market has made the Standard & Poor’s 500 SPX, -0.15%  look fabulous and virtually everything else look sad. But the tide of sentiment also is running against active management, so the idea that investors will rush to buy actively managed funds just because they come in a new wrapper is hard to believe.

Existing Eaton Vance shareholders may be encouraged if they believe they can get variations of what they own now at a lower-cost form, but if the company can’t deliver superior performance — to either the competition from traditional funds or ETFs — the form of the fund will prove irrelevant.

Meanwhile, the competition is not going to stop trying to get its take on an active fund past regulators; if regulators wind up approving other active ETF-like products, the competition will work hard to play catch-up and the public will ultimately sort out which, if any, of the new products are the next big thing in funds.

“This isn’t a victory where it’s ‘game over,’ so much as permission for Eaton Vance to get started,” said Rosenbluth.

Let the games begin.

信息来源：http://www.marketwatch.com/story ... aryandBlogs&mod=marketwatch