Reuters' Jessica Toonkel reported that the vaunted "godfather" of ETFs, Reggie Browne, joined Cantor Fitzgerald's ETF market making team. He left Knight Capital Group after he was unable to agree on the terms of a new contracts, Toonkel writes. Browne did not comment for the story.

Brendan Conway of Barron's reports that BlackRock's [profile] iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF saw hefty inflows last week, seeing $2.5 billion come into the fund. It's its highest single-week tally in data since going all the way back to September 2008, Conway writes.

iShares MSCI Brazil Capped ETF and Vanguard's [profile] FTSE Emerging Markets also saw some inflows, taking in over $470 million and $380 million, respectively, Conway writes.

An iShares spokesperson theorizes that the movement has been spurred by institutional investors, especially those interested in higher exposure to China and Korea, hoping that the Fed's tapering will be "modest," Conway writes.

The British are coming!

And this time they're coming for the gold ETFs.

MarketWatch's Victor Rektlaitis says American investors can blame the British for State Street Global Advisors' [profile] SPDR Gold Trust, or the biggest gold ETFs', fall Monday, as surprise, surprise, London traders care less about Larry Summers dropping out of consideration for the Fed, and more about the U.S.-Russian deal on the crisis in Syria.

The deal would lessen demand for haven assets, as fears about the air strike are discipating, Rektlaitis reports. Does the Financial Times have more fighting words for Jack Bogle to respond to?

The Financial Times' John Authers writes that a world more driven by passive investment gives stock indexes "immense power," writing that the world's most powerful stock picker is the governing body of the S&P 500 index.

Authers points out that a lot of trading activity occurred in favor of new Dow Jones entrants, after the announcement that Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America and Alcoa were to be taken off, showing that investors don't understand how the indices work. And if investors are making big decisions without truly understanding the now all-powerful indices, that is not a healthy trend, Authers writes.

To read more, click here, here, here and here.  

Edited by: Casey Quinlan


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