Topic: How To Invest

Pat: What is your opinion on the Guggenheim Spin-off ETF? Thank you.

Article Excerpt

The Guggenheim Spin-off ETF, $46.50, symbol CSD on New York (Units outstanding: 13.3 million; Market cap: $618.5 million; www.guggenheiminvestments.com), aims to track the Beacon Spin-off Index. The ETF’s MER is 0.65%. The Beacon Spin-off Index consists of 34 stocks. Companies can be included if they have been spun off in the past 30 months. There are no limitations on market capitalization (or the total value of a company’s outstanding shares), but companies in the index are mainly small- and mid-caps with capitalizations under $10 billion. Beacon defines a spinoff as any firm resulting from either of the following events: a parent company’s distribution of shares in a subsidiary to its own shareholders or “partial initial public offerings,” in which a parent company sells a percentage of a subsidiary’s shares to the general public. The ETF’s top holdings include WPX Energy (spun off from Williams Companies), Zoetis Inc. (Pfizer), Mallinckrodt (Covidien), WhiteWave Foods (Dean Foods), Tripadvisor (Expedia), Phillips 66 (ConocoPhillips), Kraft Foods Group (Kraft…