SPY ($SPY) ETF Faces Challenges from BlackRock, Vanguard - Bloomberg
Few champions can stay on top forever—even the ones who virtually invent the game. On Jan. 29 the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust turns 30. With $375 billion in assets, it’s the biggest exchange-traded fund on the planet, but competition for the No. 1 spot is getting fierce.
Known by everyday investors and pros alike by its ticker symbol, SPY, the fund simply tracks the S&P 500 index of the largest US public companies, for a modest fee of 0.095% of assets per year. It’s the go-to product especially for institutional money managers who want a fast and dependable way to hop in and out of the market. But other ETFs follow the same index at a third of its expense ratio and have become a magnet for everyday investors. In the past year, BlackRock Inc.’s $302 billion iShares Core S&P 500 ETF and the $275 billion Vanguard S&P 500 ETF have added tens of billions of new assets while SPY posted outflows.
Even if SPY is overtaken, its place in history as the fund that changed both personal investing and the asset management business is secure. It wasn’t technically the first ETF—that distinction belongs to a Canadian product—but it was the first in the biggest stock market when its shares began trading in 1993 under the original name Standard & Poor’s Depositary Receipts, or “spiders.” In an echo of its challengers today, the new fund upset plenty of established businesses.
First and foremost, it was a passive index fund. In the early 1990s, these were still fairly novel—they accounted for less than 2% of US fund assets, according to Investment Company Institute data, compared with close to half today. While Vanguard founder Jack Bogle was evangelizing the virtues of low-cost indexing, the biggest stars of the mutual fund business were the stockpickers at places such as Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and Templeton. Investment products commonly carried hefty upfront sales commissions to compensate the brokers who hawked them, and equity funds carried average annual expenses of more than 1.4%.
TotalEnergies says well drilling in Lebanon's offshore Block 9 to begin in Q3 | Reuters
TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) is keen to start work on Lebanon's offshore Block 9 "as soon as possible", with assessments to begin early next month and well-drilling to launch in the third quarter of 2023, its CEO Patrick Pouyanne said on Sunday.
Pouyanne was speaking in a joint news conference in Beirut after signing a three-way consortium deal with QatarEnergy and Eni (ENI.MI) to explore oil and gas in two maritime blocks off the coast of Lebanon known as Blocks 4 and 9.
Following months of talks, QatarEnergy has taken a 30% stake in the consortium, leaving TotalEnergies and Eni with 35% each.
Gulf stocks rise on hope of slower Fed rate hikes | Reuters
Stock markets in the Gulf ended higher on Sunday after cooling U.S. inflation lifted expectations the Federal Reserve would slow its pace of interest rate hikes.
The U.S. central bank's preferred gauge for inflation slowed in in December, the government reported on Friday, hitting its lowest level since September 2021.
The Fed will end its tightening cycle after a 25-basis-point hike at each of its next two policy meetings and then likely hold interest rates steady for at least the rest of the year, according to most economists in a Reuters poll.
Most Gulf currencies are pegged to the U.S. dollar, while Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar usually mirror U.S. monetary policy changes.
Saudi Arabia's benchmark index (.TASI) rose 0.2%, supported by gains in financial and energy sector stocks.
Saudi oil giant Aramco (2222.SE) inched up 0.3%, and the world's largest Islamic bank by market capitalization, Al Rajhi Bank (1120.SE) rose 1.6%.
The Qatari Stock index (.QSI) rose 0.4%, with most of its constituent stocks in positive territory.
The Gulf's biggest lender Qatar National Bank (QNBK.QA) continued its rally with a 0.9% gain and Commercial Bank (COMB.QA) continued its rally since Monday, settling 2.6% after it climbed 10% on Thursday.
The bank reported Tuesday a more than 22% rise in FY net profit, beating analyst's expectations.
Outside the Gulf, Egypt's blue-chip index (.EGX30) surged 3.7%, its highest intraday rise since November.
The index was helped by a 14.7% jump in Telecom Egypt (ETEL.CA) and Commercial International Bank Egypt (COMI.CA) jumping 6.1%.
Among other gainers, Alexandria Container And Cargo Handling (ALCN.CA) and Abu Qir Fertilizers And Chemical Industries (ABUK.CA) rose 2.4% and 0.5% respectively after they reported rises in half year net profit.
Abu Dhabi's IHC 'still evaluating' Adani Enterprises FPO stake
International Holding Company (IHC), the UAE's most valuable listed company, is "still evaluating the opportunity" to bid for Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises' 200 billion rupees ($2.45 billion) follow-on sale of shares that began this week.
"We are still evaluating the opportunity, just like any other business case," Ahmad Ibrahim of IHC told The National in a statement, adding that the company does not comment on other organisations' business activities as part of its policy.
"Our business decisions are purely based on an analysis of objective facts, aided by the use of business intelligence and our analytics tools, which help us to achieve the maximum benefits for our shareholders under the corporate governance regulation."
Shares in Adani Group companies, which are controlled by one of the world's richest men, Gautam Adani, plummeted this week after US investor Hindenburg Research said it was shorting the conglomerate’s stocks and accused companies owned by Asia’s richest man of brazen market manipulation and accounting fraud.
