New Way to Play Buybacks

Bond says that companies aren't added to the index, which includes companies of all sizes, until they have completed their stock repurchases. While this means that investors may miss out on some of the stock's price appreciation, they also avoid buying shares of companies that announce buybacks but don't follow through.

In addition to the buyback ETF, PowerShares also launched two others, PowerShares Dynamic Deep Value Portfolio (PVM Quote) and PowerShares Dynamic Aggressive Growth Portfolio (PGZ Quote).

The PowerShares Deep Value Portfolio includes about 100 U.S.-listed stocks with deep value characteristics, while the PowerShares Aggressive Growth Portfolio tracks about 100 stocks in the aggressive growth segment of the market. Both ETFs use basically the same criteria to pick and rank the stocks, including fundamental growth, stock valuation, investment timeliness and risk factors.