OilStockReport
14 years ago
For those who haven’t been following their development, PowerShares takes a unique approach to ETFs. Whereas other ETFs track broad-based indices like the S&P 500 that attempt to reflect the composition of the overall market, PowerShares track their own set of proprietary indices that implement stock screens. The indexes are rebalanced relatively frequently to overweight the stocks that Powershares believes will outperform the market, and underweight those that it thinks will lag. In this way, PowerShares represent an investment in a stock screen / trading strategy, rather than in a sector or the market as a whole. However, since PowerShares are still technically “index” funds, the SEC allows them to be implemented using the typical ETF structure and they enjoy many of the same advantages as conventional ETFs.