Ameristock Launches Five Treasury Bond ETFs

A backup in bond yields hasn't slowed the expansion of exchange-traded funds that track fixed-income markets.

Ameristock Funds entered the field Monday when it launched five offerings that track Treasurys indeces on the American Stock Exchange.

For years, Barclays Global Investors was the sole purveyor of bond ETFs, but rivals State Street Global Advisors and Vanguard Group jumped into the fray earlier this year with a combined 19 new offerings. The lateset entrants from Ameristock bring the total number of new bond ETF offerings so far this year to 24.

Bond ETFs still represent a small niche of the ETF market, which is dominated by equity offerings. In the first five months of the year, 149 new ETFs were launched, and total assets in the market rose 17% to $495 billion, according to Morningstar.

The newest entrants from Ameristock come as bond investors have been smacked around by rising long-term interest rates. Concerns about inflation sent the yields on benchmark Treasury bonds over a psychological barrier of 5% late last month.

More recently, however, the Treasurys market has been coming back into favor as a kind of safe haven amid concerns about the growing number of bad subprime mortgage loans.

Each new Ameristock ETF seeks to track a particular U.S. Treasury securities index owned and compiled by Ryan Holdings and Ryan ALM:

• The Ameristock/Ryan 1 Year U.S. Treasury ETF(GKA Quote) tracks price and yield performance of the Ryan Adjusted One-Year Treasury Index, which is based upon the return of a portfolio with a two-third weighting in the most recently auctioned six-month U.S. Treasury bill and a one-third weighting in the most recently auctioned two-year Treasury note.
• Ameristock/Ryan 2 Year U.S. Treasury ETF (GKB Quote) tracks the price and yield performance of the Ryan Two-Year Treasury Index, which is based upon the return of the most recently auctioned two-year Treasury note.
• Ameristock/Ryan 5 Year U.S. Treasury ETF (GKC Quote) tracks the price and yield performance of the Ryan Five-Year Treasury Index, which is based upon the return of the most recently auctioned five-year Treasury note.
• Ameristock/Ryan 10 Year U.S. Treasury ETF(GKD Quote) tracks the price and yield performance of the Ryan 10 Year Treasury Index, which is based upon the return of the most recently auctioned 10-year Treasury note.
• Ameristock/Ryan 20 Year U.S. Treasury ETF(GKE Quote) tracks the price and yield performance of the Ryan 20 Year Treasury Index, which is based upon an equal weighting of the most recently auctioned 10-year and 30-year U.S. Treasury note and bond.