ISE director of trading and regulation Brian Healy said the exchange hopes to make the funds, which will be aimed at high net worth and institutional investors, available "as soon as possible . . . it could be months". The move is part of a strategy to broaden access to the ETF asset class on the ISE, he said, where only one ETF . . . the Iseq 20 ETF . . . is currently available.

The ISE had expected to introduce emerging market and benchmark European ETFs by early this year and Healy says these funds . . . likely to include Hong Kong's Xinhua 25 ETF and the FTSE 100 ETF . . . are on the way, too. Healy said these new ETFs would enable investors to enter and exit these other markets efficiently and quickly without having to take a position in any actual stocks.

The more "esoteric" possibilities are likely to be ETF products that already trade on other exchanges.

Industry sources suggested these could include exchange traded commodity funds, ETFs in commodity futures or funds of contracts for difference . . . a derivative instrument that beta on the direction of a stock without buying the underlying asset.

The Iseq 20 ETF was launched in April 2005. Like other ETFs, it trades like a normal share but replicates a stock index . . . in this case the Iseq 20 . . . by tracking a basket of leading quoted companies, effectively investing in many stocks with each share.