Expert: Paul Henneman - 9/20/2005

Question
Paul,

Thanks for your answer. Some clarifications:

1. I am beginning investor and have not invested yet. By words "I created portfolio" I really meant I created a draft of portfolio, and I am now cheking it before final decision.

2. My portfolio draft includes ETFs only. I am not gambler, and so decided to go along with the market. At first I wanted to invest in index funds, but as non-U.S. citizen I am able to invest just in ETFs.

Such style of investments supposes about the same portfolio for period of investments which I evaluate as 5 years or more (just infrequent rebalancing).

3. Most of these ETFs are brand new products, and it's not possible to trace back the history. But it's possible to trace indices they refer to (at least approximately). I hoped for software available, so that to save time. If such software does not exist for stocks/ETFs, may be it exists for indices? If not, what's the best available place on the Web to look at past indices correspomding to ETFs like VTI, VNQ, AGG, TLT, IXC, EFA, EEM (currently I have just 7 in my draft so job is not that hard).

Thanks once more

Yours
Yuri  

Answer
Yuri,
  Thank you for the follow up! My best advice is Yahoo Finance. It is free, and offers truly a wealth of information, including each of the ETF's that you mentioned in your follow up. You can pull up different charts, up to five years of history. Recent press is also listed, along with alot of other resources to research these. Here is the link:

http://finance.yahoo.com

  Use the ticker box at the top to pull up those ETF's one by one. There is a small chart on the right, but if you click on one of the other time horizons (such as the five year history), it blows the chart up to full size.
   A great resource, be sure to check out the other links and information available as well as calculate the historical performance of these ETF's. As you will see, some are pretty much flat, others have performed very well.

I hope this helps! Please do not hesitate to follow up as always if I can be of any further service,

Sincerely,
Paul Henneman
President
ValuEngine, Inc.
www.ValuEngine.com
www.VEInstitutional.com