February ETF Stats Part I

With February now in the rearview mirror, the monthly ETF stats will start to trickle in over the coming and for starters, we now know that fourteen new funds rolled out last month. That's below January's ETF introduction total of nearly 25, but February's number is still decent. Noteworthy among ETFs to make their debuts last month would be the Global X FTSE Andean 40 ETF (NYSE: AND), the first ETF offering exposure to Chile, Colombia and Peru within one fund, the Global X FTSE ASEAN 40 ETF (NYSE: ASEA), which tracks several key Asian markets, the ProShares UltraShort TIPS (NYSE: TPS) and the Teucrium Natural Gas ETV (NYSE: NAGS), which could prove to be a rival to the U.S. Natural Gas Fund (NYSE: UNG). Of course, the widely anticipated FirstTrust Smartphone Index Fund (Nasdaq: FONE) also made its debut last month. In terms of new filings, Global X filed to launch seven new international funds. iShares, the largest U.S. ETF issuer by assets, announced plans to introduce an international preferred stocks ETF. Guggenheim filed plans for four new ETFs and ETF Securities announced plans for an ETF backed by physical holdings of industrial metals such as tin, copper, zinc, aluminum, lead and nickel. U.S. One filed plans for three new ETFs while WisdomTree revealed plans for a fund that will seek to deliver a real rate of return over inflation regardless of market conditions, according to ETFdb.com.