How Did the Stores of Value Hold Up during the Turbulent First Quarter?

When ProShares launched BITO, the Bitcoin Futures Strategy ETF last autumn, the ETF along with Bitcoin were promoted as “stores of value.”  The rationale was that Bitcoin was independent of stock markets and would provide diversification away from equities and tend to rise when equity markets fell. Unconvinced, I wrote a column at that time … Read more

ETFs for Gender-Lens Investing

Last Tuesday was International Women’s Day.  For the eighth straight year Women in ETFs, the standard bearer for promoting gender bias reform in the ETF industry, held bell-ringings and special programs around the world to commemorate the occasion.  There have been a number of research studies demonstrating examples that having female representation in the C-Suite, … Read more

ETFs combining Wealth Preservation and Equity Participation Objectives

Two months ago, I noted that ValuEngine models were predicting a down market for 2022 and wrote a column on redeployment of core assets for investors with short-to-medium equity time horizons.  The question for investors concerned with a downturn is what to do and if reallocation from assets committed to core equity is required, how … Read more

Time for Impact Investors and Contrarians to Unite Behind Clean Energy ETFs

The trend is your friend.  That is, until it isn’t.   The list of best performing non-leveraged ETFs for the past 90-days is led almost exclusively by ETFs that hold the stocks of fossil-fuel-based energy and closely related companies.  At the same time, the prices of ESG and more climate-focused impact ETFs have plunged dramatically.  With … Read more

Is It Time for Actively Managed Value ETFs?

There is no sugarcoating it.  January was a lousy month for the market.  Many pundits are certain that this is the beginning of a yearlong downturn. Other experts are calling this a dip and a buying opportunity.  Our models at ValuEngine are mixed with a six-month forecast on S&P 500 ETFs of +2.6% but a … Read more

ETFs for Redeploying Core Equity Allocations in 2022

Happy New Year!   My previous column focused on the ValuEngine forecast targets for 6 Benchmark Index ETFs.  To varying degrees, our models expect all of them to post negative price returns.  The question for investors concerned with a downturn is what to do and, if reallocation from assets committed to core equity is required, how … Read more

2022 Market Forecasts: Sell in May and Go Away?

A common toast has been: “May 2022 be better than 2021!”  However, where the US Stock Market is concerned, most of us would gratefully accept a repeat of 2021’s returns.   The ETF reports on ValuEngine.com for funds that follow market benchmarks provide a side benefit in writing market analyses.  They are a window to implicit … Read more

Ultra Dividend ETFs

The last Edition of this column focused on Dividend ETFs, each of which had the word Dividend in its name.  The analysis focused on identifying the best overall ETF for conservative dividend-oriented investors as an alternative core holding that had more than twice the dividend yield of the S&P 500 while collecting comparable, if somewhat … Read more

Dividend-oriented ETFs

Income-oriented investors disgusted by the pitiful yields available in US fixed income securities during the past five years have turned increasingly to dividend ETFs. However, in the ETF world, dividend-oriented ETFs and ETFs constructed to pay owners the highest possible dividend yields aren’t necessarily the same thing. Today, we’ll compare 5 dividend-oriented ETFs with very … Read more

Time to Flip the Switch from Energy to Utilities

This week’s blog focuses on a trade recommendation based upon many data elements found in ValuEngine reports combined with industry experience and knowledge. At the end-of-June blog, “Drill. Baby, Drill”, I focused on the 5 (Strong Buy) recommendation that the ValuEngine models had on the iShares US Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (ticker … Read more