<b>Pros Looked to Bearish ETFs in Q3; Ultrashort Financial Favored</b>
If anyone has been winning on Wall Street this year, it's been the bears. Luckily for the investors who foresaw the weakness, thanks to innovations in the world of exchange traded funds (ETFs), being a bear has never been easier.
This year is certainly not the first time the mood has turned sour on Wall Street; what is different, however, is the ease with which investors can now make broad bearish bets. One can sell short any of the dozens of ETFs that track the market and its various sectors, or -- better yet -- investors can buy shares of any of the many short or "ultrashort" ETFs, which are engineered to return the inverse (or two or three times the inverse) of the indexes they track.
These vehicles are still quite new and unfamiliar to many individual investors, but they have become widely tracked by tickerspy.com members during 2008. Bearish ETFs also popped up in Pro investor end-of-Q3 portfolios where they likely helped stem the losses seen by many on Wall Street so far during Q4.
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"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry