MutualFundWire.com: Forbes Pines for an "ETF Rule"

MutualFundWire.com

The insiders' edge for 40 Act industry executives!
an InvestmentWires' Publication

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Forbes Pines for an "ETF Rule"

Forbes contributor Ari Weinberg has written a piece taking issue with the SEC's decision to "kick the can down the road" by delaying new ETF regulations -- a delay he says is unsettling the market.

The SEC "seems emboldened to do no harm and little else" even as "issuers gripe, worried that their new products may never launch and their old products may never evolve," Weinberg writes.

Morningstar head of passive fund research Paul Justice told Weinberg that "ETFs are a digital-era technology operating with Depression-era laws." So, where is the comprehensive "ETF Rule" that will pull the industry from the morass of seventy-year-old regulations it's stuck in?

Weinberg blames the delay in comprehensive ETF regulation on Congress, the SEC -- and you, the slothful advisor who simply doesn't care enough to think about regulations.

At Morningstar’s ETF Invest conference in Chicago last week, financial advisers packed meeting rooms on topics from managed portfolios to credit to inflation. Only a handful bothered to take in the session on regulation and capital markets. Maybe they just don’t care about the future of ETF trading or maybe they’ve resigned themselves to bit players in the sitzkrieg.