iShares Russell Midcap Index Fund (ETF) (AMEX:IWR)

iShares Russell Midcap Index Fund (IWR) seeks investment that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the mid-capitalization sector of the United States equity market. It represents about 800 smallest companies in the Russell 1000 index with total assets approximately worth $3.19 billion.

With global appetite for technology products on the rise, the technology looks attractive with a bouquet of sectors like semi conductor, software and hardware industry in the kitty. It is dominated with the likes of Hewlett Packard, CA, NVIDIA, EDS, Cognizant and Intuit supported by internet related growth. Though the overall outlook for the technology sector looks neutral the mid caps that specializes in areas such as internet security, data security, storage and backup, chips serving the wireless market show excellent growth prospects. Financial services form more than one-fifth of the total fund and is sending mixed signal with interest rates stabilizing on one side and the major indices falling on the other. Consumer discretionary, materials and processing and producer durables account for 18.38%, 7.33% and 6.65% of the total corpus respectively.

With demand for wholesale power market rising and the repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act, the year would witness further consolidation and acquisitions. Majority of the utility sector in the fund is concentrated towards electric energy and the wireless and telecommunications benefits from the migration towards third generation technology, subsidized hand set market.

Analyzing its past return its average annual return trailing for the past five years it has been good with 12.72 % beating almost 80% of its competitors. Moreover its expense ratio fares well with its peers serving as a good gauge of all the middle caps and set for another promising year.