Barclay's Private Equity ETF Preferable To PowerShares'

The magazine cover indicator (see below for description*) would be screaming to get out of private equity right now, with Blackstone (BX) going public, and firms rushing out private equity funds.

That having been said, the news that Barclay's Global is launching a private equity fund is good news to me. From the looks of the S&P Private Equity Index (.pdf) that it is based on, it seems that they are investing in a number of the foreign listed funds. I much prefer this ETF (as well as the SG ETN launched last week even though it is listed in London) to the Red Rocks/Powershares ETF (PSP) launched last year. They list Millennium Pharmaceuticals as one of their top holdings? Quite a stretch if you ask me..

*Paul Montgomery, president of Montgomery Capital Management in Newport News, Virginia studied magazine covers going back to the 1920s and found that by the time an investment idea makes the cover of a general-interest weekly, "it has probably attained maximum saturation.''