by JT

Low interest rates are starting to fuel an economic fire. In the financial markets, I believe low-yield alternatives are leading investors to pay up for less attractive dividend funds and junk bonds. (The Wall Street Journal said the same this week).

In the housing market, low interest rates are pushing investors back into single family homes, with prices rising at the fastest pace since 2006. New single family REITs are planning IPOs. On the consumer side, Americans are snatching up automobiles (many of which are financed for less creditworthy borrowers) at a pace reaching 15 million cars per year.

Low rates are bringing higher prices, just in select markets; the markets money reaches first. Past the financial markets, the housing markets, and consumer finance, easy money eventually makes its way into the prices for everything. For all the talk of low inflation,

By Neena Mishra

2012 will go down as another significant year in the history of ETF industry. Net inflows for the year through November surged to $159.1 billion, up 55.4% from the inflows for the same period last year. While the number of products launched this year was lower compared to recent years and the closures were higher, the assets under management increased.

Investors’ appetite for fixed income and emerging markets assets increased significantly this year, resulting in many new products being added in these categories.

Of about 160 products launched this year through November, most are designed to follow the popular strategies that have worked so far, whereas few offer unique, innovative investing opportunities that were earlier unavailable to regular investors. Some will flourish while some will languish due to lack of investor interest.

Below we highlight four best ETFs launched this year that in our view

By: The ETF Professor

Observers of the exchange-traded products industry know that 2012 has been long on closures, 99 to be a precise -- a record. They also know that new fund listings have reached "just" over 160 according to Lipper data; the slowest pace in several years.

However, an argument can be made that, broadly speaking, the lack of new ETF quantity has been made up for in terms of quality. Said another way, while a fair amount of 2012's new ETFs have niche focuses, many have investment objectives that are easy to understand and are not as opaque as some critics would like to believe.

The good news for investors is that the straight forward investment objectives combined with quick success in terms of asset-gathering and performance bodes well for some of these ETFs on two levels. First, they could be equally if not more successful