TheStreet.com - Fund Watch 1
Merrill Plans to Launch Wireless HOLDRs
The basket of 20 stocks will include Nokia and Ericsson.
By Dagen McDowell
Senior Writer
Get ready for another way to invest in the wireless sector. Merrill Lynch , which already
offers more than a dozen of its HOLDR securities, has filed for permission to launch one of these tradable baskets that invests
in wireless stocks.
Similar to most of the existing HOLDRs, this basket will contain 20 of the largest stocks from just one sector. The coming
wireless portfolio will include big-name stocks such as Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERICY - news) , Nokia (NYSE: NOK - news) and
Motorola (NYSE: MOT - news) .
The Wireless HOLDRs will trade on the American Stock Exchange , which means that, unlike mutual funds, you will be able to
buy and sell shares in real time during the trading day. The ticker symbol will be WMH.
You'll already find 12 sector-specific HOLDRs, investing in industries from semiconductors and software to regional banks and
utilities. (You can find a list of all the existing baskets on the HOLDRs Web site at www.holdrs.com.)
Just a reminder for the uninitiated: The HOLDRs portfolios are fixed and don't have managers to decide which stocks to buy
and which to sell. If a stock in one of these baskets disappears in an acquisition, a new one will not be added to take its place.
As with the other HOLDRs, you will be able to buy and sell the wireless basket only in round lots of 100 shares. That floor will
put the minimum purchase around $10,000.
In the proposed wireless basket, the maximum weighting for any one stock is set at 10%. Once the basket starts trading,
however, that cap doesn't stay in place and one stock can command far more than 10% of the portfolio if its price rises
dramatically.
If you buy these HOLDRs before they start trading, you'll pay a 2% underwriting fee. If you wait until trading begins, you can
go to a discount broker and save yourself some money.
See TheStreet.com's full site for more of its unique insider's perspective on Wall Street.
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More Quotes
and News:
Ericsson, Telefonab. L M AB (NasdaqNM:ERICY - news)
Motorola Inc (NYSE:MOT - news)
Nokia AB Oyj (NYSE:NOK - news) |
