If Abby Joseph Cohen is/was the quintessential perma-bull for U.S. equities, Franklin Templeton’s Mark Mobius is her perma-twin for emerging markets. In fact, it may not be possible to find a moment in time when Mobius wasn’t bullish on emerging countries. Today, Mobius isn’t even falling back on valuation-based arguments; he’s not talking about GDP growth or fiscal policy. He simply points to [...] [...more]
What was one of the first market reactions to Libyan rebels taking over Tripoli? A net positive… as an uncertain war may finally be coming to an end. Best of all, with the Gadhafi regime fading into the history books, the world may be able to rest a bit easier. Yet investors now have to wonder, who will be in charge in [...] [...more]
Bernanke’s testimony to Congress gave stocks a monstrous boost early on Wednesday. Why? He suggested that the Fed may buy more securities with dollars that didn’t exist several years ago. Then investors thought twice about the implications, as stocks gave back most of their Fed-inspired gains. After all, if the Fed is seriously considering QE3, unemployment and economic malaise may be [...] [...more]
The S&P 500 will require a 19% return from its 7/12/11 close to capture its previous bull market high set in October, 2007. Yet many “ex financials” indexes are already back, as are a number of key cyclical sectors. For instance, a number of Tech ETFs have recovered the highs of the previous bull market (October, 2007). Most of the [...] [...more]
Market Overview And ETFs, ETF Investing Themes, Asia ETFs, India ETFs, Small Cap Japan ETFs, Large Cap China ETFs, Small Cap China ETFs Click here to listen to the show: 7-10-2011 [...more]
Recently, Gary talked about his reasons for adding WisdomTree Asian Local Debt (ALD) to a number of client portfolios. It’s refreshing to see that other analysts and writers are warming up to Asian debt as well. For instance, Cris Heaton at Index Universe wonders if a boom in Asian debt offerings will keep up with robust [...] [...more]
The U.S. stock market has actually outperformed the overwhelming majority of world equity markets on a local currency basis. However, the dollar’s year-to-date slide has inflated the returns of developed world ETFs like iShares MSCI France (EWQ) and iShares Italy (EWI). In fact, virtually all of the gains for Foreign Stock ETFs traded on U.S. exchanges can be attributed to the [...] [...more]
ETFs like the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA) or iShares S&P 100 Index (OEF) are both down roughly -6% over the previous 4 weeks. In the same time frame, the iShares Russell 2000 (IWM) has shed -8%. Breadth indicators confirm that investors have been transitioning from small companies over to larger ones. However, if enough fear grabs hold of equities, relative outperformance may be [...] [...more]
5 down weeks in a row! In some ways, it sounds worse than the actuality. After all, the S&P 500 closed out the first week of June a mere -4.6% away from a multi-year pinnacle. Of course, pessimists really do have reasons to fret. The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index is at its worst levels since the recession was in [...] [...more]
The debate over the best way to get total commodity exposure has raged for years. One author (see below) appears to favor the PowerShares DB Commodity Tracking Fund (DBC). Gary Gordon tends to favor the Greenhaven Continuous Commodity Index Fund (GCC) for its equal weighting approach across 17 possibilities. Nevertheless, each investment has a drawback or two. With [...] [...more]
