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WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The U.S. securities regulator on Wednesday approved the first U.S.-listed exchange traded funds (ETFs) to track bitcoin, its Chair Gary Gensler said, in a watershed for the world's largest cryptocurrency and the broader crypto industry. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved 11 applications, including from BlackRock (BLK.N), Ark Investments/21Shares (ABTC.S), Fidelity, Invesco (IVZ.N) and VanEck, among others, according to a notice on its website. Some products are expected to begin trading as early as Thursday, kicking off a fierce competition for market share.

As a deadline to approve a spot bitcoin ETF nears, the marketing war has begun as issuers seek to win a share of a market some experts say will be worth billions of dollars. On Monday, Bitwise Asset Management kicked off the race to market to potential investors by showing its first video advertisement on X (formerly Twitter) featuring Jonathan Goldsmith, who tells the audience, “You know what’s interesting these days, Bitcoin.” The dialogue is a reference to Goldsmith’s notable role as the “Most Interesting Man in the World” in commercials for Dos Equis beer. About a dozen firms have...

Viridi Funds announced that the Viridi Cleaner Energy Crypto-Mining & Semiconductor ETF (NYSEARCA:RIGZ) will liquidate and de-list from the New York Stock Exchange. RIGZ was actively managed and provided market participants with exposure to the cryptocurrency mining industry and indirect exposure to crypto-assets such as Bitcoin (BTC-USD) and Ethereum (ETH-USD). RIGZ, which jumped out of the gates with a 15% rally in its first 48 hours of trading, caught a wave of upward momentum from the crypto craze. The fund soared 133% in its first four months of trading, alongside Bitcoin’s peak. However, since the fund topped out at $56.63...

@unusual_whales This is truly wild. Senator Thomas Carper bought up to $110k in Ranger Equity Bear Bear ETF, $HDGE, an active ETF that shorts US listed stocks. He sits on the Senate Finance Committee. And as a politician, he is actively shorting the US economy.

“We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”The above quote comes straight from Warren Buffett’s 1986 annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. It’s one of his most timeless quotes… and one of the most important for investors in the current market.Everyone is worried about inflation, rising interest rates, and a likely recession… The data shows the crowd is already panicking—and selling stocks in a big way. You might be scared and tempted to sell, too.But if Warren Buffett is right… that means now is actually a great time to...

ProShares' bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) listed on the New York Stock Exchange today, and it was welcomed with explosive interest. "It absolutely obliterated," said James Seyffart, Bloomberg Intelligence ETF Analyst. At the time of writing, volumes for the so-called ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) stood near $1 billion after its inaugural trading day. At last check, volumes stood at $999.473 million. Many expected a massive launch, but Seyffart told the Block that the volumes blew away expectations. Bloomberg Intelligence was expecting the product to top the launch of the VanEck Social Sentiment ETF ($BUZZ), according to Seyffart. $BUZZ did...

Key Points The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, which will give exposure to bitcoin futures contracts but not the spot market, will trade under the ticker “BITO.” The Securities and Exchange Commission had not formally approved the creation of bitcoin futures ETF as of Friday afternoon and the agency may never make a formal declaration of approval for it. The proposed date for the listing is Monday, according to the new filing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s when it will begin trading. That could come later in the week.

Even as the cryptocurrencyF bitcoin has gained traction within the investment community, bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETFs) are still a pipe dream. Meanwhile, blockchain ETFs have already made their debut in mainstream markets. In the news and mainstream media reports, the terms bitcoin and blockchain are sometimes used interchangeably. As a result, it's possible to confuse blockchain ETFs and bitcoin ETFs, although they are different financial instruments. Key TakeawaysWhile bitcoin exchange traded funds (ETFs) are not yet a reality, blockchain ETFs have already made their debut in mainstream markets.In recent years, virtual currencies have been embroiled in multiple regulatory battles...

The multidecade-long bull market in Treasurys has delivered rich gains to patient investors, but a 2021 bond-market selloff is likely inflicting significant pain on some market participants. Though many were expecting yields to rise this year as the reflation narrative gained ground, few were prepared for the rapid rise in long-term bond yields since the start of this year. Yields move in the opposite direction of bond prices.

For the diversified portion of countless investors' portfolios, the key choice has been ETFs vs. mutual funds for years now. For many investors, the choice boils down to this: Exchange traded funds tend to be cheaper than mutual funds. So shouldn't investors simply stick with ETFs? X In fact, shouldn't you dump your mutual funds for ETFs?You might be tempted to switch since many financial advisors and independent investment strategists now focus on using ETFs rather than mutual funds to build clients' portfolios. That's mainly because of cost, flexibility, transparency and tax efficiency:ETFs cost less. Most ETFs have lower...

Crude oil futures rose 3.5 percent in mid-afternoon trading on Wednesday, following official data earlier in the day showing a 3.4-million drop in crude inventories and a fall in crude output to 8.8 million barrels per day, the lowest since the fourth quarter of 2014. June deliveries of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) were up US$1.57, or 3.5 percent, settling at US$46.23 per barrel on the New York exchange. This jump is higher than any closing price the commodity has seen since November of last year.

BlackRock's Gold ETF (IAU) has seen fund inflows every day in 2016 (no outflows at all) and with the stock trading above its NAV for most of the year, the world's largest asset manager has made a significant decision: •*BLACKROCK SAYS ISSUANCE OF GOLD TRUST SHARES SUSPENDED• *BLACKROCK SAYS SUSPENSION DUE TO DEMAND FOR GOLD ... It appears the huge demand for physical gold (and lack of supply) is finally catching up with the manipulation of paper prices. If this is anything other than a brief technical suspension, it could well unleash panic-buying as we already pointed out - there...

Some really weird things are happening in the financial world right now. If you go back to 2008, there was lots of turmoil bubbling just underneath the surface during the months leading up to the great stock market crash in the second half of that year. When Lehman Brothers finally did collapse, it was a total shock to most of the planet, but we later learned that their problems had been growing for a long time. I believe that we are in a similar period right now, and the second half of this year promises to be quite chaotic. Apparently,...

[from IBD: Should ETFs Be In Your Investment Portfolio?]While ETFs have existed for several decades, their popularity and diversity have exploded in recent years. But many investors are just learning about them. Those looking for tips on how to invest in ETFs just need some basic information to get started. In basic terms, ETFs can be thought of as mutual funds that trade like stocks. But their portfolios can contain U.S. and foreign stocks, bonds, futures, physical commodities or currencies. And ETFs choose the securities for their portfolios with an investment objective in mind. These investment goals include growth...

This featured fund is broader than some of those covered previously in our current series about the world’s largest exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The market’s fourth-largest ETF is simply one to invest in when you think times are good and things are looking up across the board in the United States: Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI). VTI is less discriminatory than the other U.S. funds we have examined, since it tracks an index that includes nearly every stock in the U.S. market that is open to investment. The fund’s holdings run the gamut from large to small and value- to...

What Are ETFs? In the simplest terms, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are funds that track indexes like the NASDAQ-100 Index, S&P 500, Dow Jones, etc. When you buy shares of an ETF, you are buying shares of a portfolio that tracks the yield and return of its native index. The main difference between ETFs and other types of index funds is that ETFs don't try to outperform their corresponding index, but simply replicate its performance. They don't try to beat the market, they try to be the market. ETFs have been around since the early 1980s, but they've come into...

Back in April, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an international super-regulator, wrote a prescient if less than catchily-titled paper "Potential financial stability issues arising from recent trends in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)". Its central warning – that ETFs are not the cheap and transparent vehicles the marketers would have us believe – was spot on. When UBS’s $2bn black hole hit the screens on Thursday, no one who read the FSB report was surprised to see the words ETF and rogue trader in the same sentence. The past ten years have seen an explosion in the popularity of ETFs. In...

The latest Gallup Poll shows Gov. Rick Perry as the top candidate with tea Party voters, but some Texas tea party activists aren't drinking the "Perry for President" Kool-Aid. "It is very frustrating when you hear that there is a tea party candidate out there which has zero tea party endorsements," said Katrina Pierson, a key organizer for the Dallas Tea Party and the head of the Garland Tea Party. Pierson said that while Perry pushes a "pro-business" message on the campaign trail, she doesn't like many of the policies used to promote new Texas businesses, including the Emerging Technology...

Eric Sprott, Chairman of Sprott Asset Management, and James Turk, Director of the GoldMoney Foundation, talk about how there isn't enough silver in the silver market to back existing "paper silver" commitments. While there is much in the attached interview, the bottom line is that Sprott thinks that "silver will be the investment of this decade". And with 3 out of 5 central banks having just embarked on monetization, and two more imminents, he will almost certainly be right. CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO

Well, what about housing? It’s been dead for so many years that its blood long ago stopped flowing. Surely this famous piece of advice from Nathan Rothschild doesn’t apply to that sector? Don’t be too quick to dismiss the possibility. Consider the iShares Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Index fund, an ETF that is designed to represent the real-estate sector. Just one week ago, it traded at a 52-week high. The same goes for the iShares Cohen & Steers Realty Majors. What does the market know that the rest of us don’t? For answers, I turned to an investment service...