Guggenheim Investments [profile] is about to leave a product niche behind.

Last month the mutual fund and ETF shop revealed plans to shut down nine ETFs [see the release], and now Invest With An Edge editor Ron Rowland reports that the closures, slated for Friday, mean that "Guggenheim is now completely ceding the [leveraged and inverse ETF] space to ProShares and Direxion." Guggenheim first entered the leveraged and inverse mutual fund and ETF space by buying Security Benefit, the parent of Direxion and ProShares rival Rydex.

The nine ETFs in question — the Guggenheim ABC High Dividend ETF, the Guggenheim MSCI EAFE Equal Weight ETF, the Guggenheim S&P MidCap 400 Equal Weight ETF, the Guggenheim S&P SmallCap 600 Equal Weight ETF, the Guggenheim Airline ETF, the Guggenheim 2x S&P 500 ETF, the Guggenheim Inverse 2x S&P 500 ETF, the Wilshire 5000 Total Market ETF and the Wilshire 4500 Completion ETF — held a mere $148 million, one percent of Guggenheim's $13.7 billion in ETF assets as of January 31.

Meanwhile, Guggenheim continues to offer Rydex-branded leveraged and index traditional (i.e. non-ETF) mutual funds. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE