XShares Reinvented as ETF Hawker

XShares, he says, decided to make that process easier by licensing indices from companies that have expertise in a certain space and creating ETFs on them, including going through the approval process.

The company also recently announced two additional agreements, one with Chicago Climate Exchange to develop products based on carbon-emission credits, which will be called AirShares, and another with Elliot Wave International to create ETFs that are designed to satisfy special needs in the financial marketplace.

"We now have about 130 potential groups who want to create ETFs with us," Feldman says. "We see narrow indexes as an alternative to single-stock ownership," Feldman says, adding that owning an ETF that represents a group of companies eliminates the single-stock risk.

But because these are narrow products, Feldman says they are generally geared at sophisticated investors or registered investment advisers.