An ETF wrap is similar to a mutual fund wrap, except the underlying investments are ETFs. (If you are unfamiliar with ETFs or Mutual Fund Wraps, see Introduction to Exchange-Traded Funds and Introduction To Mutual Fund Wraps.) Like mutual fund wraps, ETF wraps are available in two varieties: discretionary and non-discretionary.
Discretionary Account
From an asset allocation perspective, discretionary accounts are similar to lifestyle funds. They offer a variety of pre-selected equity, balanced and fixed-income asset allocation models designed to suit the needs of a wide range of investors. These models typically reflect a range of potential portfolios from 100% equity to 100% fixed income, with balanced models generally varying from 80% equity/20% fixed income to 20% equity/80% fixed income.
Professional money managers oversee the portfolios, selecting investments, monitoring performance and rebalancing to maintain the desired allocation. (To learn more about asset allocation, see Achieving Optimal Asset Allocation.)
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/mutualfund/05/ETFwrap.asp
In the 19th century, state corporation law enhanced the rights of corporate boards to govern without unanimous consent of shareholders in exchange for statutory benefits like appraisal rights, to make corporate governance more efficient. Since that time, and because most large publicly traded corporations in the US are incorporated under corporate administration friendly Delaware law, and because the US's wealth has been increasingly securitized into various corporate entities and institutions, the rights of individual owners and shareholders have become increasingly derivative and dissipated. The concerns of shareholders over administration pay and stock losses periodically has led to more frequent calls for corporate governance reforms.
In the 20th century in the immediate aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 legal scholars such as Adolf Augustus Berle, Edwin Dodd, and Gardiner C. Means pondered on the changing role of the modern corporation in society. Berle and Means' monograph "The Modern Corporation and Private Property" (1932, Macmillan) continues to have a profound influence on the conception of corporate governance in scholarly debates today.
From the Chicago school of economics, Ronald Coase's "Nature of the Firm" (1937) introduced the notion of transaction costs into the understanding of why firms are founded and how they continue to behave. Fifty years later, Eugene Fama and Michael Jensen's "The Separation of Ownership and Control" (1983, Journal of Law and Economics) firmly established agency theory as a way of understanding corporate governance: the firm is seen as a series of contracts. Agency theory's dominance was highlighted in a 1989 article by Kathleen Eisenhardt (Academy of Management Review).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_governance
The COSO "Enterprise Risk Management-Integrated Framework" published in 2004[1] defines ERM as: "A process, effected by an entity's board of directors, management, and other personnel, applied in strategy setting and across the enterprise, designed to identify potential events that may affect the entity, and manage risk to be within its risk appetite, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the achievement of entity objectives."
The COSO ERM Framework has eight Components and four objectives categories. It is an expansion of the COSO Internal Control-Integrated Framework published in 1992 and amended in 1994. The eight components - additional components highlighted - are:
Internal Environment
Objective Setting
Event Identification
Risk Assessment
Risk Response
Control Activities
Information and Communication
Monitoring
The four objectives categories - additional components highlighted - are:
Strategy - high-level goals, aligned with and supporting the organization's mission
Operations - effective and efficient use of resources
Financial Reporting - reliability of operational and financial reporting
Compliance - compliance with applicable laws and regulations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_risk_management
Big Boys are buying a lot and not selling.
Massive buying across all groups from Big Boys to retail buyers.
Something is brewing.
