10 Things You Need to Know: Exchange-Traded Indices Pose Threat to Mutual Funds

This story is part of a weeklong series that looks at the top 10 trends to help you invest in the coming year. Click on the tile at left to see other stories.

Exchange-traded funds arrived during the 1990s, but they may own the year 2000.

Barclays Global Investors, the world's largest indexing firm, will be betting big money on a new line of exchange-traded index funds. The firm has filed paperwork to launch more than 30 of these products, and the first cluster is expected to hit the market around the end of the first quarter. ...