The current 28 holdings place a heavy weighting on energy, materials, and financial names, most of which have small or middling market caps. The fund is expected to be in high demand as Vietnamese shares have been among the best performing in the world this year. The benchmark VN Index - which is broader than the one VNM tracks - is up 61% this year. Investors will pay a premium for access, however, as the fund carries a .99% expense ratio. By contrast, European investors pay only .85% for the db-x trackers FTSE Vietnam (XFVT).

Yet ETFs like the United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG) and the United States Oil Fund (USO) seem to have thus far gotten away with high fees, poor disclosure, and disappointing returns, as investors are still buying them in droves. But regulators are less happy, and commodities-futures ETFs may not survive the coming regulatory onslaught.

The United States Natural Gas Fund (UNG) was the month's big winner with as investors showered 1.7 billion dollars on the commodity futures fund, despite concerns about its tracking accuracy. iShares's TIP Bond Fund (TIP) saw the second biggest cash infusion, with the inflation-conscious sinking $942 million into the inflation protected US bond fund.

The global financial crisis started in the United States, and the US economy has consequently suffered more than most. Although total output has fallen less than the global average, the rise in America's unemployment rate has been the steepest in the OECD. It has the world's largest budget deficit as a percentage of GDP, save the UK. And although US shares didn't fall as far in 2008, they have hardly risen in 2009 - left in the dust by recovering emerging markets.

The fund may appeal to investors looking to profit from the problems at larger banks, as smaller players are in a position to lend and gain market share. The index is down 25% so far this year, beating the 35% ytd decline of the SPDR KBW Regional Banking Fund (KBE). First Trust specializes in such niche products, and is the 14th largest issuer of ETFS in the US.

All those guys on Wall Street or in the city of London driving Maseratis need to learn how to drive a tractor.

So says legendary investor Jim Rogers, whose friendly advice to the investment banking community reveals his belief that agriculture will be the next great bull market.

The iShares MSCI All Peru Capped Index Fund (EPU) will allow US investors to easily access one of Latin America's hottest markets by tracking a pure free float market cap weighted index. Its 25 names are heavily concentrated in the materials sector (65%), with a particular focus on gold, silver, and copper. Its largest holding at 19% Cia De Minas Buenaventur (BVN) who produced nearly half a million ounces of gold last year (compared to Goldcorp's 2.4), and its second largest at 15% is Southern Copper (PCU), the biggest player in the world's fourth largest copper producing nation.

The EMIF may seem to be a direct competitor to the Powershares Emerging Market Infrastructure Portfoilo (PXR), but in reality the two are radically different.

But one thing ETFs can't seem to do is track energy prices. ETFs that invest in energy futures have had a terrible time this year as a market condition known as contango has eaten away their returns. The United States Oil Fund (USO) is up 16% ytd, while crude oil itself is up over 50%. This massive underperformance is no secret and no fluke; it's the inevitable result of the investment strategy listed in USO's prospectus. But many investors who thought they were buying a fund that tracked crude oil have been burned.

Many investors assume that the USO simply tracks the price of crude oil. It does not. Rather, it invests in near-month crude oil futures. When those futures expire, the fund uses the proceeds to buy new contracts, a process known as rollover. When oil markets are in contango - that is future prices are higher than spot prices - rollover becomes a nightmare for the USO, forcing it to waste money selling oil and buying it back again at a higher price.

The deal promises to remake the Exchange Traded Fund industry as BGI's iShares unit - the world's largest issuer of ETFs - is to be embedded into what is now the world's largest asset manager. The new firm's scale - its $2.7 trillion in assets makes it larger than the Federal Reserve - could make for significant costs savings and lower expense ratios for investors. The new Blackrock is also likely to heat up the fixed income ETF market, as it now takes its fight with arch-rival Pacific investment Management Company (PIMCO) into the exchange traded space.

Despite these gigantic gains, there is still time to profit from emerging markets. The major averages still aren't anywhere near their 2008 highs. And the shift from the West to the emerging world is a long term trend that will take decades to unfold. With the US dollar steadily losing its value, and Europe and Japan in terminal demographic and economic decline, emerging markets are the logical place to invest for the future.

ETFs are structured as equities, while ETNs are structured as debt. When an ETF closes or the issuer goes bankrupt, the underlying assets are sold and the proceeds returned to investors. The process isn't perfect, but for the most part investors in a defunct ETF get their money back. Holders of ETNs, on the other hand, are treated as creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding. There is no guarantee that ETN investors will get a single dime of their money back in the event of an issuer's collapse.

A Latvian devaluation could spread panic in Eastern Europe as investors flee nations that may debase the value of their holdings. In addition to fellow Baltics Lithuania and Estonia - Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria could be next. It is unknown how far this could spread, but it should be noted that the 1997 Asian financial crisis began when Thailand was forced to abandon its peg to the dollar.

From the end of the Ming dynasty in 1644 to the death of Mao, the West eclipsed the Middle Kingdom in every imaginable metric of human progress.

The Peruvian stock market its the world's best performing YTD, with the benchmark Lima General Index soaring 95% so far this year. The market is dominated by natural resources companies that mine Peru's rich deposits of copper, zinc, tin, gold, and silver, making it a good play on infrastructure demand in emerging markets.

The stark warning from the leader of the world's fourth biggest economy comes at a time when the European Central Bank, based in Germany, is debating how far to follow its Anglo-Saxon counterparts into quantitative easing. The ECB is due to begin buying € 60 billion of corporate bonds and has considered making bigger purchases in the future. Merkel's speech may be interpreted as a signal that Berlin will not stand for an overly loose monetary policy.

The Russian market tanked last year as the global recession hit Russia's growth prospects and crude oil's spectacular fall destroyed the earnings potential of the Russian stock market. In 2008 the benchmark RTS Index fell a record 76%. The selling was driven by stong fundamental factors - high corporate debt levels built up during the boom times proved crushing when oil prices fell. But much of the sell off was also driven by one-off redemptions and pure panic. Fearing a repeat of 1998, investors fled rouble assets in fear of a full blown currency crisis that never arrived. And when oil and gas prices stopped falling, major producers like Gazprom (MCX:GAZP) and Rosneft (MCX:ROSN) suddenly looked undervalued.

Barclays had already agreed to sell iShares to private equity fund CVC Partners for USD 4.4 billion in April, but has been soliciting higher offers under a "go-shop" clause in the contract. Speculation had been that the British bank was seeking to unload all of it Barclays Global Investors (BGI) unit - which includes iShares and other asset management products - to firms such as BlackRock (BLK) or BNY Mellon (BK), but no deal has yet been announced. Barclays is desperately trying to raise cash in an effort to avoid the fate of the Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, which have both been nationalized by the British government.