The Horizons ETFs Biggest Winner Is Crowned With A 31.9% Return!

More than half the competitors in ETF contest beat the stock market

TORONTO, June 7, 2012 /CNW/ - James Buchan from Ottawa was able to find opportunity in very difficult market conditions, generating a 31.90% return over a two-month period. Mr. Bucnan's stellar return earned him $5,000 cash as the grand prize winner of the Horizons ETFs Biggest Winner Competition (the "Competition"), which was run and sponsored by Horizons Exchange Traded Funds Inc. ("Horizons ETFs") and hosted on Stockhouse.com.

Nearly 1400 people registered to participate in the Competition, which ran from April 10, 2012 to May 31, 2012. The Competition used a real-time virtual online brokerage account, where investors bought and sold any of the 86 ETFs offered by Horizons ETFs throughout any trading day. Each participant's virtual trading account was funded with $100,000 CAD of fantasy dollars for them to trade the ETFs. More than 21,500 ETF trades were made during the course of the competition.

Horizons ETFs offers a broad range of ETFs exposed to a wide variety of assets and markets, including the largest suite of leveraged, inverse, and actively managed ETFs in Canada.

Mr. Buchan's best ETF trade was a well-timed purchase of the Horizons BetaPro S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures™ Bull Plus ETF which generated a $12,280 return for his account.

The runner-up in the Competition, who earned a $1,000 cash prize, was John McDonald from Toronto, who generated a 31.89% return, less than 0.01% behind the 1^st place return and which represented a difference of about $8.00 in account value.

Mr. Buchan and Mr. McDonald were joined by 78 other participants who generated double-digit returns of 10% or greater during the nearly two months the competition ran.

"Generating a double-digit market return during any two-month period is impressive enough. To do so during a period where the stock markets are negative is phenomenal," said Howard Atkinson, President & CEO of Horizons ETFs. "These are the kind of returns you read about coming from prominent Hedge Fund Managers, but the participants in our competition are not household name fund managers, they are investors from all walks of life. It just goes to show, you don't have to work on Bay Street to be a top-notch investor.

This achievement is all the more impressive considering that many major asset classes, delivered negative returns while the competition was running. In fact, 54% of the participants beat the S&P/TSX 60™ Index return of -3.49% during the course of the Competition.

"To be successful in difficult market conditions, investors had to be tactical and make good use of ETFs that delivered returns that were inverse or non-correlated to stock markets," said Mr. Atkinson. "Beating the market is an amazing feat, the fact more than half of our participants did so speaks volumes to how effective our suite of ETFs are in helping investors navigate different types of market conditions."

In total, more than $10,000 in cash prizes were handed out during the course of the Competition, including eight $500 weekly prizes to the portfolios with best weekly returns.

About Horizons Exchange Traded Funds Inc. (www.horizonsetfs.com)

Horizons ETFs is an innovative financial services company offering the Horizons ETFs family of ETFs. The Horizons ETFs family includes a broadly diversified range of investment tools with solutions for investors of all experience levels to meet their investment objectives in a variety of market conditions. With more than $3.4 billion in assets under management and 86 ETFs listed on the TSX, the Horizons ETFs family makes up one of the largest families of ETFs in Canada. Horizons ETFs is a subsidiary of Horizons ETFs Management (Canada) Inc. and a member of the Mirae Asset Financial Group.

Howard Atkinson, President & CEO, Horizons ETFs, [phone] or [email protected]