Leveraged, Inverse, and Specialty ETFs

Dear Colleagues,

The advent of leveraged, inverse, and specialty ETFs that cover all aspects of the corporate capital structure (and indeed, most of the investable universe in the United States) has opened up exciting new possibilities for asymptotic capital growth, online portfolio optimization, and risk management by institutional and individual investors, as well as high-frequency traders and market makers. With the aid of these new products, sophisticated market participants can achieve superior performance metrics through the proper gearing of balanced, risk-parity, target volatility, or other types of high-Sharpe trading strategies and investment portfolios. Leveraged and specialty exchange-traded products also create opportunities for intrepid individuals and families to bear additional risk in their tax-advantaged retirement accounts—accounts that may lack access to more traditional sources of leverage, such as margin lending or equity options. Accordingly, this Special Issue will present a collection of original research papers that study leveraged, inverse, and specialty ETFs, their use by all types of market participants, and the general effects that these products exert on the broader financial markets.

Suitable topics include but are not limited to the following: leveraged ETFs, inverse ETFs, specialty ETFs, commodity ETFs, treasury ETFs, bond ETFs, optimal gearing ratios, algorithmic trading, robust operation of leveraged ETFs, tracking error, constant-rebalanced portfolios of leveraged ETFs, risk analysis, portfolio optimization, expense ratios, risk parity funds, balanced funds, simulation of leveraged ETFs, tax efficiency of leveraged ETFs, volatility decay, rebalancing premium, and cost of leverage.

Dr. Alexander Garivaltis
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Financial Studies is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Leveraged ETFs
• Inverse ETFs
• Specialty ETFs
• Optimal gearing ratio
• Tracking error
• Volatility decay
• Cost of leverage
• Rebalancing premium
• Treasury ETFs
• Bond ETFs