Dan Culloton at Morningstar.com reviews the year in ETFs. We still can’t decide whether 2005 was the year of the ETF or the year of the hedge fund? One thing we can be sure of is that there will be a number of ETF launches in 2006.

Judging from the frenetic pace of ETF launches we saw in 2005, its safe to say investors will see a fair amount of trend hopping. For example, there were five new dividend focused ETFs launched in 2005 and Barclays, State Street Global Advisors, and PowerShares all rolled out or planned to roll out more thinly sliced ETFs tracking hot areas, such as homebuilding or the oil and gas industries. Just remember if they build it, you don’t have to come–until you’re sure it fits your goals and risk profile.

Roger Nusbaum at TheStreet.com takes a closer look at one of the newer ETFs, the Powershares FTSE RAFI US 1000 (PRF). He thinks investors should take a hard look at the fund’s returns before assuming it is a large-cap core fund.

Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture takes one his employers to task for publishing what he calls an “astonishingly irresponsible headline.” Dow 11,000 should not a reason for the financial press to assume the role of cheerleaders (once again).

Gary Dorsch in the US Market Blog thinks the flattened yield curve should be viewed with some caution.

Mark Hulbert at Marketwatch.com notes some research that shows the market does act differently around round numbers. More interesting are the implications after breaching a headline number.

Arnold Kling at EconLog has eight “edgy” ideas for economists to test. We think #1 and #3 are particularly interesting.

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