Deutsche Bank has listed two additional Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) linked to money market rates as part of their product offering.
The db x-trackers II SONIA Total Return Index ETF and the db x-trackers II Fed Funds Effective Rate Total Return Index ETF reflect the British and American short-term money market interest rates of 5.48% (SONIA) and 3.47%(Fed Funds Effective Rate) as of 25 January 2008.
ETFs are passive managed funds which are traded on the stock exchange and which reflect the performance of an index. Especially those ETFs based on money markets enjoy great popularity among institutional as well as private investors because of their high flexibility and low costs.
The db x-trackers II EONIA Total Return Index ETF which is linked to the Eurozone money market rates, attracted more than 1.6 billion assets under management within less than 7 months. This makes it the biggest European fixed income ETF.
“The great success of the db x-trackers ETFs linked to the EONIA Total Return Index confirms that investors have already noticed the advantages of listed Funds linked to money market rates. The advantages are that they can be easily traded any time, show a high degree of transparency, have no investing-limits and are daily adjusted to the official money market rate,” says Thorsten Michalik, who is responsible for db x-trackers, Deutsche Bank Exchange Traded Funds.
The indices tracked by db x-trackers money market ETFs increase daily, compounding their value at the respective interest rate and are thus implicitly capital protected.
“The The db x-tracker money market ETF’s structure is extremely safe. They have demonstrated during the past months of market crisis to just diverge from the underlying indices due to the 0.15% all-in fees. Besides, being UCITS III compliant funds, our ETFs do not involve the same counterparty credit risk of deposits, certificates and bonds.” adds Marco Montanari, who is responsible for the development of fixed income funds at db x-trackers.
The new ETFs on SONIA and FED Funds Effective Rate Index will be traded in Euros in Deutsche Boerse and Borsa Italiana offering investors the opportunity to additionally participate in the performance of the respective underlying currency. In case the British Pound or the US-Dollar increases against the Euro during the investment period, the price of the respective ETF soars up too and vice versa. This is the reason why these two ETFs might be seen as the first two currency-ETFs in Europe.
In addition to the listing on Deutsche Brse and Borsa Italiana, the two new db x-trackers ETFs will also be listed on other European stock exchanges in the weeks ahead