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发表于 2009-6-30 02:27 PM
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By John Spence, MarketWatch
BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- Investors can now bet for or against a recovery in the residential real estate market with new exchange-listed securities designed to mimic the movement of U.S. home prices.
Investment manager MacroMarkets on Tuesday launched exchange-traded products on the NYSE Arca designed to track housing values.
MacroShares Major Metro Housing Up (UMM 19.60, -0.43, -2.15%) and MacroShares Major Metro Housing Down (DMM 30.94, +0.03, +0.10%) are benchmarked to the S&P/Case-Shiller Composite-10 Home Price Index. The paired securities will feature a 300% leverage factor.
"For the first time, the market will have available exchange-traded benchmarks as an indication of where investors believe U.S home prices are headed," said Robert Shiller, MacroShares chief economist.
"Our current financial crisis is largely due to a failure to manage housing risk," Shiller added. "At approximately $20 trillion, U.S. housing is a large and important asset class that has suffered from the lack of liquid, transparent markets."
The MacroShares Major Metro Housing Up is designed to rise when U.S. housing prices climb. Its counterpart, MacroShares Major Metro Housing Down, profits when real estate values fall.
Unlike most exchange-traded funds, the MacroShares don't invest directly in an underlying asset such as stocks, bonds or commodities futures. Instead, MacroShares are issued in pairs, and an equal number of shares for each fund are created. The funds invest in short-term Treasury securities and overnight repurchase agreements.
The paired trusts have a binding agreement to pledge assets to one another over time, based on the movement of housing prices. This transfer of Treasury securities back and forth between the funds changes their values and gives investors exposure to the direction of U.S. home prices. The structure resembles a see-saw as the assets are shuffled between the paired trusts. The arrangement has also been compared to total-return swaps.
Because of the leverage factor, the MacroShares will experience changes of three times, or 300%, of the S&P/Case-Shiller Composite-10 Home Price Index.
The housing benchmark fell about 18% for the year ended April, Standard & Poor's said Tuesday. |
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狗仔卡
发表于 2009-6-30 02:40 PM
