Non-cyclical stock sectors (e.g., consumer staples, health care, utilities, etc.) often do well when there are concerns about economic growth. Indeed, exchange-traded funds representing one or more components of the non-cyclical arena have been the key drivers in the broader U.S. market’s run toward all-time records. Nevertheless, it is still a bit surprising that the potential [...] [...more]
There are a wide variety of active risk management strategies. None of them are fool-proof. The one that we advocate — stop-limit loss orders — may have adverse tax consequences; the stop may also fail to execute in a rapidly declining market. Options and futures investors cheer the “out-of-the-money” puts. This has the benefit of an insurance policy, though [...] [...more]
Short-sellers and program traders are in charge… for now. Going into Wednesday’s (8/3/11) session, PowerShares QQQ (QQQ) sat directly atop its 200-day moving average. After falling below the key trendline early, QQQ springboarded to finish with a 1% gain. Or consider the S&P 500 SPDR Trust (SPY). It fell precisely -10% from its April 29 intra-day high to its August 3 [...] [...more]
Two of the most bullish voices in the mainstream media include money manager Ken Fisher and Bob Doll, the chief equity strategist at Blackrock. Fisher experienced an epic “fail” by completely missing the 2007-2009 bear/financial collapse; he had little choice but to stick with a never-ending bullish theme to claim credit for calling the “turnaround.” Bob Doll has always [...] [...more]
There has been a lot of talk about equity market resilience. There has been even more talk about the enormous amount of Stock ETF inflow… $5.5 billion last week alone! Nevertheless, the largest gains are coming from the least volatile sectors. Healthcare ETFs have been noteworthy outperformers over 1 and 3 months. What’s more, share prices of peanut butter and [...] [...more]
With stock markets globe-wide succumbing to volatility, certain ETFs have secured more than a fair share of followers. For example, PowerShares US Dollar Bullish (UUP) has successfully capitalized on the king of all currencies. Treasury Bond ETFs have also curried favor. Does his mean you should buy into the doom-n-gloom forecasted by U.S. Treasury Bond ETFs? Or are there other ways to interpret the recent flight to [...] [...more]
