Guide To ETF Providers: Invesco PowerShares

Invesco PowerShares currently offers more than 171 domestic and international index-based ETFs, exchange traded notes (ETNs) and actively managed ETFs, with franchise assets exceeding $70 billion. The ETFs represent seven broad categories:

• Access - targeted exposure to niche markets
  
  
• Commodity and currency - access to commodities and currencies
  
  
• Equity-based resources - companies involved in mining and extracting commodities, the water industry and alternative energy
  
  
• Factor-driven - non-leveraged emphasis or minimizing of general market movements
  
  
• Fundamentals weighted - based on sales, cash flow, book value and dividends
  
  
• Income - income generating portfolios
  
  
• Quantitative - evaluation and tiered-weighting based on certain investment criteria such as valuation and risk

SEE: An Inside Look At ETF Construction

Invesco PowerShares is a part of Invesco Ltd. (NYSE:IVZ), an independent global investment management company. One family of PowerShares ETFs is based on FTSE RAFI Indexes, which fundamentally weight stocks according to sales, cash flow, book value and dividends instead of the more traditional approach of weighting indexes according to market capitalization. Invesco PowerShares' largest ETF family is based on Intellidexes - indexes that utilize rules-based quantitative analysis to select stocks for the capital appreciation potential. In addition, PowerShares offer ETFs that target specific industries and world regions, as well as ETFs based on indexes that follow niche investing strategies.

Invesco PowerShares was founded in 2003, and today offers dozens of ETF products that are traded on all major stock exchanges in the U.S., Canada and Europe. The PowerShares QQQ ETF, known simply as the Q's or the cubes, is based on the Nasdaq 100 Index and it one of the most actively traded equity securities in the world.

Figure 6: Invesco PowerShares\' top five largest funds by AUM. Information current as of Feb. 8, 2013.