The first quarter was rather turbulent. But given the unexpected burst of inflation and the savage Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the final price reading of the S&P 500 of -5.2% comes almost as a relief. A late rally in March mitigated the overall damage The ETF reports on ValuEngine that follow market benchmarks provide … Read more
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
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
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
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
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
Lost in all the market volatility and concerns about interest rate hikes and inflation was a regulatory ruling with major implications for asset capture in the ETF industry. The New York State Department of Financial Services is the state’s insurance regulator. In December it published a new regulation that, until Jan. 1, 2027, allows shares … Read more
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
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
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