2008 proved to be a veritable nuclear winter for all investment asset classes except U.S. Treasury bonds. The ongoing, massive world-wide flight to safety has rendered retired investors bewildered and struggling to find true safety and reasonable rates of return.

Investors are wondering if Treasuries will be king of the hill again in 2009. Not likely, according to Mohamed El-Erian, Chief Investment Officer at Pimco, who recently advised investors to "Get out of Treasuries. They are very, very expensive." Andrew Bary punctuated that same sentiment in Barron's exclaiming, "A flight to safety has created a bubble in Treasury bonds. Get out now!"

Based on historical patterns, the following list of dividend-paying asset classes is a good starting point for retired investors wishing to construct a well-diversified retirement portfolio for income.

Many of our readers at AboutETFs.com enjoyed our earlier article The Complete List of Currency ETFs and have been requesting a similar list for commodities. So, once again, by popular demand, here is our newest list, The Complete List of Commodity ETFs and ETNs, as of October 20, 2008.

COMMODITY BASKETS (All Commodities)

Many of our readers at AboutETFs.com have shown increased interest not only in US Government backed bonds, but in Investment Grade Corporate bonds as well. The prevailing question seems to be “should I shift entirely out of corporate bonds, even investment-grade corporate bonds, and move my bond allocations into US Government paper?”

The number of Foreign Currency ETFs and ETNs has exploded in the past year.  Our readers at AboutETFs.com have asked us repeatedly to publish an updated list of all currency ETFs and currency ETNs.  So, by popular demand, here they are as of September 1, 2008:

INDIVIDUAL CURRENCY PRODUCTS

• RydexShares ETFs: Australian Dollar (FXA), British Pound (FXB), Canadian Dollar (FXC), Euro (FXE), Japanese Yen (FXY), Mexican Peso (FXM), Swedish Krona (FXS) and Swiss Franc (FXF)
• WisdomTree ETFs: Euro (EU), Japanese Yen (JYF), Brazilian Real (BZF), Indian Rupee (ICN), New Zealand Dollar (BNZ),  US Current Income Fund (USY), Chinese Yuan Fund (CYB) and South African Rand (SZR)
• Barclays iPath ETNs:  Euro (ERO), British Pound ((GBB) and Japanese Yen (JYN)
• Elements ETNs: Australian Dollar (ADE), British Pound (EGB), Canadian Dollar (CUD), Euro (ERE) and Swiss Franc (SZE)
• Van Eck/Morgan Stanley ETNs: Chinese Renminbi-Yuan (CNY), Indian Rupee (INR), Double Long Euro (URR), Double Short Euro (DRR)

BUNDLED CURRENCY PRODUCTS

• PowerShares ETFs:  Group of 10 Carry Trade (DBV), and U.S. Dollar UP (UUP), U.S. Dollar Bearish (UDN)
• Barclays ETNs: Barclays iPath Optimized Currency Carry (ICI), Barclays GEMS Index (JEM), Barclays Asian & Gulf Currency Revaluation Note (PGD)  

According to Roger Nusbaum, in an article posted August 31, 2008 on Seeking Alpha using information from Index Universe, WisdomTree has more currency ETF offerings on the way:

Exchange-Traded Notes (ETNs) aren’t known for paying high dividends.  In fact, ETNs don’t usually pay dividends at all.  Among the 90 (+) ETNs actively trading today, and flying well below most investor radar screens, there are actually four of these “stealth-like” dividend paying ETNs.  Known by few investment advisors and even fewer investors, dividend paying ETNs have been quietly trading among sophisticated income investors for more than a year.`

Dividend ETFs and high dividend Closed-End Funds have been growing in popularity as conservative investments for retired investors and income investors alike, as they seek to increase portfolio income payouts, reduce market volatility and improve monthly retirement income stability. The question that income investors often ask us at AboutETFs is “Which would be better for me, Exchange-Traded Funds or Closed-End Funds (CEFs)?”

To help answer this question, we turned to Claymore Securities, Inc. for help. Over the past seven years, Claymore has issued approximately $18.4 billion in ETFs, CEFs and Unit Investment Trusts. Claymore’s excellent array of 31 ETFs and 16 CEFs provides us ample data for a simple case study contrasting the differences of dividend-paying ETFs with dividend-paying Closed-End Funds.

We recently reviewed Tom Lydon and John Wasik’s excellent ETF book, iMoney: Profitable ETF Strategies for Every Investor and deem this superb ETF resource as the most reader and user-friendly book on exchange-traded funds published to date.

Chapter 1 presents a perfunctory, but pleasantly concise, historical summary of ETF evolution. Chapter 2 reveals the authors’ bias toward traditional indexed ETFs. However, it also juxtaposes the goals, benefits and disadvantages of traditional indexing versus the newer fundamentally-weighted indices for ETFs. The authors simply conclude that the vote is out, the battle of index methods will continue, and we will just have to wait and see which ones survive.

In April, 2008, Chance Carson, President of Alpine Strategies, LLC in Colorado, interviewed Mr. Richard Ferri, author of the highly instructional book on ETF investing The ETF Book: All You Need to Know About Exchange Traded Funds, John Wiley & Sons, ©, 2007. One of the many topics covered in the interview was about the development of actively-managed ETFs. Here are some highlights from the interview.

Chance Carson: One of the difficult issues facing actively-managed ETFs is the SEC’s daily disclosure rule. Tell us more about that.