By John Spence, Associate Editor

Well, ETF trading is going transatlantic.

The American Stock Exchange (AMEX) and Euronext have announced plans to cross-list and trade U.S. and international exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Effectively, ETFs that trade on Euronext will soon be available on the AMEX, and vice versa, pending regulatory approval.

"Our intention is to have a 24-hour global trading platform for the same ETF share that trades here [at AMEX] to trade in various global joint ventures [with other exchanges]," said Larry Larkin, Senior VP at AMEX responsible for new product development.

Euronext is one of the European exchanges where "trackers" (the European vernacular for ETF) trade. It was created in September 2000 as a result of the merger of the Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris exchanges. There are currently 3 trackers that trade on Euronext, although Barclays Global Investors recently announced its intention to list 4 iShares ETFs based on European Bloomberg Indices. For more information about the Euronext exchange and upcoming ETF launches there, please check out a previous article.

AMEX said the move was one of the first in a series of steps to establish a global and fungible ETF trading system that will allow retail and institutional investors to trade ETFs across international time zones. In June 2000, AMEX announced an agreement with the Singapore Exchange to trade AMEX-listed ETFs in Singapore. According to a statement released yesterday, AMEX expects its ETFs to trade in Singapore in the second quarter of 2001.

New Biotech iShares

Barclays Global Investors (BGI) said that a new ETF based on the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index will begin trading tomorrow, 2/9/2001, on AMEX.

BGI has been working feverishly as of late launching ETFs that track sector indexes as domestic and international sector investing (for better or worse) has become all the rage.

"An exchange-traded fund that tracks the biotech sector was one of the most requested from our customers," said Lee Kranefuss, CEO of BGI's Individual Investor Group, in a statement released today.

When asked about the trend of sector investing during a media conference call today, Kranefuss said that BGI has filed for several ETFs based on global sector indexes.

The fund will trade under the symbol IBB and will have an expense ratio of 0.50%.

The Nasdaq Biotech Index was originally launched on November 1, 1993, and there are currently 76 companies listed in the index. It is the first Nasdaq index to have an ETF tied to it since since "cubes" (trading symbol: QQQ), which are based on the Nasdaq 100 index.

The index increased 23% last year, according to Nasdaq. The chart below shows the performance of the Nasdaq Biotech Index, the AMEX Biotech Index, and the S&P 500 from the beginning of 1995 to yesterday's market close.

Source: Reuters

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