NYSSA Program on ETFs

We had a great program on Exchange Traded Funds at NYSSA in New York on Thursday.

Panelists included:

Michael Eschmann, Senior Vice President at Direxion Funds, a leading sponsor of leveraged ETFs.  Direxion has launched 16 ETFs since last November which have attracted over $1.5 billion in assets in a very short period of time.

Peter Hill, NYC regional consultant for State Street Global Advisors (SSgA).  SSgA is the second largest sponsor of ETFs in the U.S. including the world’s largest gold fund, SPDR Gold Shares, which recently passed $30 billion in assets.

David Elan who joined us from Boston where he is a principal and member of the investment committee at Windward Investments.  Windward manages over $2 billion and uses ETFs as key part of a diversified investment strategy.

Berk Nowak, co-founder of Highmount Capital and a member of NYSSA.  Highmount uses ETFs as part of an overall approach in advising wealthy families and was recently ranked by Bloomberg to be in the top 20 in the U.S. in terms of average AUM per client.