Top 10 Health Care ETFs

Our goal in this profile is to help investors wade through the many competing ETF offerings available. Using our lengthy experience as an ETF publication, and almost 40 years in the investment business, we can help choose those ETFs that thing as well as will or perhaps may certainly not be repetitive. The result is a more manageable list of issues from which to view as well as make selections.

There is currently an growing list of 24 ETFs oriented to the health care sector with more on the method. The following analysis features a fair representation of ETFs available. We believe from these investors may choose an appropriate ETF to satisfy the best index-based offerings people and financial advisors may utilize.

We are not ranking these ETFs favoring you over another so don't let the listing order mislead you. Although we will use many of these in ETF Digest portfolios it's not our intention to recommend one over an additional.

ETFs are based on indexes tied to well-known index providers including Russell, S&P, Barclays, MSCI, Dow Jones as well as so forth. Also included are many so-called "enhanced" indexes that attempt to achieve better performance through more active management of the index.

Where competitive issues exist and/or repetitive issues available at a fee cost saving we mention those as other choices. Brand new issues are coming to marketplace consistently (especially globally) as well as occasionally these issues should become more seasoned before they will be included at least in our listings.
For traders as well as investors wishing to hedge, leveraged and inverse issues are available to use from ProShares and Direxion as well as exactly where available these are noted.

XLV (SPDR Healthcare Sector ETF) follows the Health Care Select Sector Index. The fund was launched in December 1998. The expense ratio is .20%. Assets under Management (AUM) equal over $3.4 billion as well as average daily trading volume are over 15M shares. As of late October 2011 the dividend is $.66 creating the current yield 2.02% with YTD performance over 6.60%.

An alternative choice can include IYH (iShares Dow Jones U.S. Medical ETF) follows the index of the same name. The expense ratio is higher at .48%. The constituents are similar to XLV whilst the YTD return as of July 2011 is 5.43%.

Both ProShares as well as Direxion Shares maintain leveraged extended as well as brief ETFs for hedging or perhaps speculation needs.

Data as of October 2011
XLV Top Ten Holdings & Weightings Johnson & Johnson (JNJ): 13.97%Pfizer Inc (PFE): 11.04%Merck & Co Inc (MRK): 8.06%Abbott Laboratories (ABT): 5.40%Bristol-Myers Squibb Business (BMY): 4.31%Amgen Inc (AMGN): 4.06%UnitedHealth Group Inc (UNH): 4.00%Eli Lilly as well as Company (LLY): 3.01%Medtronic, Inc. (MDT): 2.82%Baxter International Inc. (BAX): 2.59%



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