PSP, no this isn’t some new form of PCP or LSD or new street drug of choice, though it is a huge favorite among teens and college aged kids on the streets. The PSP stands for Play Station Portable. This is the newest hand held gaming system from Sony for their Play Station franchise. This new gaming system is light years evolved ahead of the Nintendo Gameboys that helped to start the whole craze, and PSPs offer far more options than their “ancient" predecessors.
PSPs are gaining strongly in popularity. Many advertisements on television commercials will even mention a movie coming out on PSP as well as DVD. The ability of this consul and portable gaming system to adapt to multi-functional usage is one of the aspects that makes it so appealing. While there were definitely some early detractors to the new PSP model when it was initially introduced (along with a huge number of gaming fans who swore by the Nintendo DS portable system) Sony’s PSP console’s ascent in popularity has been amazing, and remarkably fast, much like the popularity of Apple's iPod.
With the emergence of the console, PSP games have come into much higher demand. The cheaper alternative to buying games in stores is download them online, and the PSP seems to want to encourage these online sites to make downloading of the games and spreading of the game much easier. There are, in fact, over a dozen web sites set up specifically for downloading games. Most of these sites have a membership fee, ranging from a month to a year. A few of the web sites even have the option of life time memberships for a larger one time fee.
The nice thing for Play Station fans who are looking at a PSP is that the controls have not been radically changed. One thing about Nintendo, for example, was how radically the controls changed from the original Nintendo system to the Super Nintendo system, to the N-64, to the Nintendo Game Cube. Fans of the Sony systems won’t have to worry: whatever small changes are made, they are all still based and designed on the original controller that everyone has become familiar with. The PSPs thus have the familiarity of all the previous Sony Play Station features that make them so popular while also adding new benefits and bonuses to the equation, giving the PSPs a great chance at staying in the popular mainstream.
There was an excellent article discussing the pros and cons of investing in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) in the July 3rd Wall Street Journal: As ETFs Seek Niches, Risks Rise (unfortunately, The Wall Street Journal doesn't allow us to link to their articles, perhaps that will change after Rupert Murdoch buys Dow Jones.) There's over $500 billion invested in Exchange Traded Funds and, I believe, they will either replace open-end index mutual funds or force those funds to lower their expenses. A win for investors. Exchange Traded Funds generally have lower on-going expenses then index mutual funds. You're charged a commission to buy or sell them, as for a stock, but the commission may be less then the fee charged by your broker, or fund, for buying a mutual fund (consider the share class you're buying). They are priced, and traded hourly, not at the end of the day as with open-end mutual funds.
ETFs are excellent tracking vehicles for many different kinds of investments. Want to invest overseas? In commodities? Buy an Exchange Traded Fund. (Not to get carried away, there are index funds that track most of the indices that do ETFs.)
So what's not to like about Exchange Traded Funds? Going back to The Wall Street Journal article, Lipper, which tracks fund performance, reported that a disproportionate number of ETFs showed up on its losers (poor performing) list. For some it is simply a case of tracking a narrow and volatile index, nanotechnology, for example. The lesson here is that investors need to consider the riskiness of any investment they're making. An Exchange Traded Fund doesn't diminish the risk of a cutting-edge technology, volatile commodity, or stock market of an emerging country. What a good one will do is reflect the performance of whatever index its is designed to track.
Like most new products, and Exchange Traded Funds are a new product, there will be some product-specific risks as well. Some won't track their underlying index due to design error or too narrow a portfolio. Costs won't automatically be less, turnover and taxes will be issues for some and to mitigate these risks stick with Exchange Traded Funds issued by well-known institutions.
Vanguard, the godfather of index funds, has joined the ETF party and is coming out with more. (See When is a Door Not a Door for more information on and what John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, thinks of them.) Vanguard's action is perhaps the best evidence to date of the rise of ETFs.
The moral to the story is to consider Exchange Traded Funds whenever you're considering an index fund or want a low cost and liquid way to obtain exposure to a particular type of investment. Just remember that this doesn't reduce the risk of the investment class.
Both Ted Belfoure & Bill Byrnes are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.