SPDR Jumps 32.3% in 2013

Last year was a banner year for U.S. stocks and the ETFs that tracked them.

• Large caps in the S&P500 SPDR (SPY) soared 32.3%, their best performance since 1997, topping the index’s 29.6% rally.
• Small caps in the iShares Russell 2000 (IWM) surged 38.7%.
• All U.S. sectors posted gains:
• Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR (XLY) rocketed 42.7%.
• Health Care Select Sector SPDR (XLV) surged 41.4%.
• Industrials Select Sector SPDR (XLI) soared 40.5%.
• Financials Select Sector SPDR (XLF) jumped 35.5%.
• Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR (XLP) rose 2.63%.
• Energy Select Sector SPDR (XLE) leapt gained 26.3.%.
• Materials Select Sector SPDR (XLB) advanced 26.0%.
• Technology Select Sector SPDR (XLK) climbed 26.3%.
• Safe haven Utilities Select Sector SPDR (XLU) did the worst, but still gained 13.0%.
• Outside the U.S., developed markets tracked by the iShares MSCI EAFE ETF (EFA) gained 21.4% as investors noticed Europe’s bargain valuations and Abenomics fueled a rally in Japan.
• However, the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM) lost 3.7% as the resource-dependent economies of Brazil and South Africa saw sizeable declines.

All results are total returns, with dividends factored in

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Select Sector SPDRs Sue Over Shadow Symbols

The Select Sector SPDR Trust sued INVESCO PowerShares Capital Management over ticker symbols. Filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Houston, the suit charges PowerShares with trademark infringement and misappropriation.

Select Sector SPDRs offers a family of ETFs that divides the S&P 500 into nine individual sector funds. In April, PowerShares launched a family of nine sector ETFS for the small-cap market based on the S&P 600, a small-cap index. (Blog Postings: Small-Cap Investors Get Sector Funds and Sector ETFs Help You Avoid Single-Stock Risk)

The PowerShares funds, which trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market, use four-letter ticker symbols that add an “S” to the end of the ticker for the Select Sector SPDR funds covering the same industry. Those trade on the NYSE Arca.

“This is a deliberate and unconscionable act on the part of PowerShares to confuse both institutional and retail investors,” said Dan Dolan, director of wealth management strategies for the Select Sector SPDR Trust in a written statement. “PowerShares has succeeded in casting an unfortunate shadow on Wall Street’s efforts to eliminate financial opacity.”

Dolan noted that 101 out of 102 ETFs previously launched by PowerShares have tickers that start with “P.” The sector funds in question are the only products in PowerShares ETF family that begin with an “X.”

Below is a list of the funds side-by-side:

Sector SPDR Consumer Discretionary (XLY)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Consumer Discretionary Portfolio (XLYS)

Sector SPDR Consumer Staples (XLP)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Consumer Staples Portfolio (XLPS)

Sector SPDR Energy (XLE)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Energy Portfolio (XLES)

Sector SPDR Financials (XLF)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Financials Portfolio (XLFS)

Sector SPDR Health Care (XLV)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Health Care Portfolio (XLVS)

Sector SPDR Industrials (XLI)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Industrials Portfolio (XLIS)

Sector SPDR Materials (XLB)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Materials Portfolio (XLBS)

Sector SPDR Technology (XLK)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Information Technology Portfolio (XLKS)

Sector SPDR Utilities (XLU)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Utilities Portfolio (XLUS)

Calling the PowerShares symbols “astoundingly similar,” Dolan told the Wall Street Journal: “I don’t think there’s any other way of looking at it than they’re trying to jump on our back.”

He’s right, of course. If PowerShares planned to latch onto this already understood product, it was a brilliant marketing strategy. The Select Sector SPDRs are probably the most recognizable ETFs in the world. Their marketing campaign of spiders making webs in the shapes of industry icons, such as an oil rig for its energy ETF or a stethoscope for the health care ETF, has been a huge success, both in explaining that ETFs are financial products and what a select sector is. Traders, large and small, call stocks by their tickers not their company names. So, if you wanted the small-cap fund for energy, instead of XLE, you would simply remember the “S” for small.

The question becomes who owns a ticker symbol and can you trademark the first two or three letters of a ticker symbol? Currently, the Intermarket Symbols Reservation Authority, run by the Options Clearing Corp., or OCC, assigns ticker symbols to companies and ETFs. “The ISRA operates a uniform, transparent system for the selection, reservation, assignment and transfer of securities trading symbols by NMS Plan participants.”

Since there are only so many possibilities for three- and four-letter combinations, aren’t there always going to be tickers similar to yours? For instance, most people assume INTL is the ticker for Intel, but it’s not; it’s INTC. Surprisingly, among the many media outlets that reported this story, no one seems to have called the OCC for its opinion.

I did, but the OCC hasn’t gotten back to me.

Meanwhile, I would say the amount of market confusion is minimal. The Journal says the nine Select Sector SPDRS have $31 billion in assets under management. Meanwhile, the nine PowerShares funds in question hold only $50 million. Most hold less than $6 million, and have an average daily trading volume of less than 10,000 shares a day. The Select Sector SPDRS see average daily volumes in the tens of millions.

Select Sector SPDRs Lowers Fee by 8.7%

The Select Sector SPDRs family of ETFs reported on Tuesday it lowered the expense ratio on all nine ETFs by two basis points, or 8.7%,, to 0.21% from 0.23%. The change is effective Jan. 31.
Launched in 1998, the Select Sector SPDRs were the first ETFs to track market sectors and originally charged an expense ratio of 0.65%. The family divides the S&P 500 index into nine sector index funds

· Consumer Discretionary SPDR (XLY), which equals 7.85% of the estimate weight of the S&P 500 as of Feb. 9.
· Consumer Staples SPDR (XLP) – 12.34% estimate weight of S&P 500
· Energy SPDR (XLE) – 14.26% of S&P 500
· Financials SPDR (XLF) – 10.97% of S&P 500
· Health Care SPDR (XLV) – 15.69% of S&P 500
· Industrials SPDR (XLI) – 10.65% of S&P 500
· Materials SPDR (XLB) – 3.11% of S&P 500
· Technology SPDR (XLK) – 20.68% of S&P 500
· Utilities SPDR (XLU) – 4.45% of S&P 500
As of Feb. 6, together the nine held more than $19.8 billion in assets. In 2008, they traded an average of 260 million shares per day.

For more on Select Sector SPDRS see ETFs for the Long Run, page 35.