Herb Blank Our last blog discussed safe harbors amidst the current storm of market volatility. The idea presented was to investigate the strong buy stocks with the lowest betas. This week we home in on a sector that is typically low volatility and low growth. Currently we find fairly competitive earnings growth in this sector. We look … Read more
Market volatility last week was the highest it has been in 2025. While it sent a portion of investors heading for the exits, many more looked to shift assets from large-cap technology stocks and cap-weighted ETFs into less volatile investments. For example, low beta stocks and low beta ETFs have seen increased interest as investors … Read more
I will often feature stocks rated buy or strong buy in highly rated sectors. This one is a departure. The healthcare sector is most commonly represented by the Select Sector SPDR Healthcare ETF, XLV. It faced a challenging year in 2024, underperforming the S&P 500 Index by a staggering 22.4%. This massive performance shortfall resulted … Read more
Conversations about Trump’s tariffs, despite two of them being placed on hold for now, continue to dominate market discussions. Although it could be different this time, historically these announcements cause volatility in the short run. But by about the time they become reality, if not before, their effects are absorbed by the market with barely … Read more
Last year, I was asked by a local investing club to provide a list of ValuEngine’s top 10 stock picks for 2024. I screened our list for top-rated stocks with at least $10 Billion in Market Capitalization and excluded ADRs and stocks not ranked by any analysts according to our data feed. This top 10 … Read more
Taking Stock of the Utilities Sector First: Happy New Year to all ValuEngine readers, subscribers, clients, customers, and partners! The recent market pull back may have some investors scrambling to re-allocate their investments to reduce some risk. The utilities sector has historically been a focus for investors looking to lower volatility. In this blog we … Read more
As classified by ETF Database (etfdb.com) by VettaFi, there are currently 92 dividend focused US ETFs with nearly $460 billion under management. If you are seeking dividend income from your ETFs, which should you take a close look at? That’s the objective of the analysis in today’s research blog entry. All 5,200+ stocks US and … Read more
Amidst widespread speculation, The return of President Trump as commander-in-chief could threaten earnings growth in the defense industry in 2025. Analysts seeing it this way point to these items on the perceived Trump agenda: Hardball negotiations with defense contractors led by the new Department of Government Efficiency co-heads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy; Trump’s stated belief one … Read more
A Georgia-based brokerage has settled allegations that it and its president developed and sold a trading strategy that they did not understand and that caused near-total losses for 350 clients, according to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority as reported by Financial Advisor Magazine recently. The brokerage had agreed to $2 million in partial restitution to … Read more
What Can We Learn from Sector ETFs? My last blog focused on the 3rd quarter rotation from large cap-weighted growth ETFs to index ETFs that were more value-oriented, equally weighted and/or mid- and small-cap focused. Sector ETFs are often used for rotation strategies in addition to being vehicles for long-term investment. There are 132 sector … Read more