John Hood iShares Diversified Monthly Income ETF XTR-T COMMENT Dec 31, 2012

Does iShares collect an MER from all the other ETFs held within XTR? He's asked Blackrock this and, no, they're not double-dipping. Generally speaking, there's no question that MERs of ETFs will continue to decrease because of of competition among ETF compnaies. It's amazing how far they've fallen just in the past few years.

The bond markets are impaired and will be for a while. Low interest rates are here to stay. Income focused ETFs with exposure to bonds will not return 4-5%. Are you getting return of capital or yield? Must look into the structure where the returns are coming from. Both are similar. Both ZMI and XTR give you exposure to diversified income. All fixed income has negative return after inflation.

Banks are cutting rates, which is a tailwind, but the market has already priced it into balanced ETFs like this. So, there's limited upside.

Broad basket of equities and fixed income. The one thing to keep an eye on is the bond portion. If we start to see inflation rear up again (because of US spending and tariffs), you might want to take your bond duration down, which you can't do with this ETF. Yield ~4.25%.