In the world of investment, the efficiency of even the most elaborate models is often based on surprisingly simple truths.

Only a couple of years ago, investing in commodities was a complicated matter involving a futures account or an indirect approach through equities. Invesco PowerShares and Deutsche Bank now provide a more efficient access to an area that’s not correlated to equities.

Founded with the ambition to change the ETF industry, PowerShares has combined three concepts to carry out “the Intelligent ETF Revolution.” The three elements of its strategy are: the development of ETFs with the characteristics of quantitative rules-based indices; the implementation of fundamental indexing; and the availability of “intelligent access” to thematic investment areas.

The PowerShares India Portfolio is an ETF providing direct exposure to stocks of Indian companies. The Indus India Index, on which the India Portfolio is based, is designed to replicate the Indian equity markets as a whole, through a diverse group of 50 Indian stocks, selected from a universe of the largest companies listed on the two primary India exchanges.

State Street Global Advisors, the investment management arm of State Street Corp., provides investment strategies across every asset class, investment approach and style. One of the SPDR ETF family’s current objectives is to establish a solid presence in the underrepresented fixed-income segment of the ETF arena. State Street is partnering with Lehman Brothers to provide ETFs based on broad indices both in the U.S. and overseas.

Innovation can lead you to interesting places, and in the case of Van Eck Global, it led us to global-growth related ETFs in previously undercovered investment areas of the ETF market. Our ETFs are designed to be effective building blocks for a diversified portfolio and to provide investors with pure exposure to specific sectors or countries, including companies not trading in the U.S.

With not too many fixed-income ETFs on the market, Ameristock’s new products aim to bring competition and choice for investors. The concept behind the ETFs, which track a different index, includes the ability to play the yield curve, pure style, and limited expenses. The move is the next logical step for a company that already has products tracking the prices of oil and natural gas as reflected in their futures.

WisdomTree is the first company that manages ETFs based on indexes it creates and owns. Luciano Siracusano believes that the standard capitalization-weighted indexes are flawed in their tendency to overweight the overvalued stock, sectors, and regions. That’s why the company developed fundamentally weighted indexes to target better returns with lower volatility.

A major challenge for financial professionals is satisfying the expectations of a more educated and demanding client base. Advisors want to employ more sophisticated strategies but need to execute them in a simple way. That’s the big picture behind the success of ProShares ETFs. They enable investors to easily hedge or magnify their exposure to broad indexes, sectors, asset classes, or styles.