An emerging trend I've identified with new ETFs that have come to market over the past year or two is that providers are now giving investors less of what they "need", and more of what they "want". Think about it for a moment, in the early days of ETF innovation, funds were brought to market to satisfy a specific need within a portfolio. Providers knew that investors required exposure through an ETF to every corner of the equity and bond market if widespread adoption would ever take hold. Now that we've reached a saturation point for the needs of investors, providers are focusing on the wants.

Which brings me to the same conclusion as to why certain mutual funds have remained popular for decades; investors simply want access to superior returns. They want less beta options and more alpha options for their portfolios, since its the intermingling of the two

I recently wrote an article about several different preferred stock ETFs and how they can be implemented into your portfolio to as a source of income and capital appreciation. However, with the continued rise in the stock market over the last six weeks I wanted to revisit this topic to analyze the potential volatility that these funds can be susceptible to as well. I believe that it is becoming increasingly important to have a game plan in place to manage the risk of falling asset prices in your portfolio as we move into the seasonally weak summer months.

Income investors have been conditioned by Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve to seek out higher yielding securities for their capital in an effort to generate an adequate dividend stream. This has injected billions of dollars into preferred stocks, junk bonds, mortgage REITs, and other high yield investments. The continued

As stocks continue to rally, two other asset classes that have been doing very well lately are junk bonds and preferreds. Below are six-month price charts of the high yield (junk) bond ETF (HYG) and the preferred stock ETF (PFF). As shown, both have basically gone parabolic over