In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal Fund Track column, John Spence took a look at how the fresh credit fears brought about by the Bear Stearns news affected ETFs. Among the ETFs he tracked: the SPDR S&P 500 ETF traded lower by more than 1 percent, the S&P Financial Select Sector shed 2.3 percent, and the iShares S&P Global Financials was down 2.1 percent. Morningstar's director of exchange-traded securities analysis, Jeff Ptak, noted that while the news on Bear helped moved markets downward, the New York company's stock was not a substantial contributor to the decline experienced by financial ETFs because most of them had modest positions in Bear Stearns. "The key question, of course, is which shoe will be the next to drop amid manifold signs that a massive deleveraging cycle is heavily stressing the capital markets," Ptak noted.  

Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE