As the number of exchange-tradedfunds continues to multiply, investors have the ability to achieve increasingly granular exposure to narrow segments of the global economy. This development has worked out quite nicely for investors who utilize a "core and explore" strategy that calls for the bulk of exposure to be held in broad, plain vanilla stock and bond funds with smaller weights assigned to more targeted asset sub-classes that are deemed to be potential sources of alpha. The innovation in the ETF industry has given investors tools for tapping into incredibly targeted corners of the market, ranging from producers of solid state drive technology to smartphone manufacturers to platinum miners.
It's also created an opportunity to tap into the "transportation sector," a term that can loosely be used to cover companies whose operations focus around moving people and things between places. Below, we profile a few ETFs covering everything from planes to trains to automobiles [for more ETF insights, sign up for the free ETFdb newsletter]:
Guggenheim Airline ETF (NYSEARCA:FAA)
FAA tracks the NYSE Arca Global Airline Index, which is designed to measure the performance of highly capitalized and liquid U.S.