Barclays Readies 10 New iShares Exchange-Traded Funds

Like Woody Allen movies and Stephen King tomes, new iShares exchange-traded funds from Barclays Global Investors continue to roll out at a surprising pace.

On Friday, 10 more iShares funds will launch, bringing the firm's iShares fund total to 56. Since introducing iShares in May, the funds have gathered $2.6 billion in assets.

Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, are baskets of stocks that typically replicate an index and trade as one security on a stock exchange. Many believe they pose a serious threat to traditional open-end mutual funds because they typically offer lower costs and the convenience of intraday pricing and trading. Although the value of a traditional mutual funds portfolio changes constantly throughout the day, mutual funds typically only price at the end of the trading day. (Want to know more about ETFs? Check out Dagen McDowell's primer, "Everything You Want to Know About ETFs -- But Didn't Know How to Ask.") ...