03/02/2026 ValuEngine Weekly Market Summary & Commentary

Weekly Market Recap – Week Ending February 27, 2026 Markets closed the week with measured gains across major equity ETFs, even as geopolitical tensions escalated and volatility expectations rose sharply. Broad-based funds such as QQQM (+0.97%), SPYM (+0.59%), and VB (+0.94%) advanced modestly, while sector performance was more pronounced in Communication Services (XLC +2.33%) and … Read more

02/02/2026 ValuEngine Weekly Market Summary & Commentary

Weekly Market Recap – Week Ending January 30, 2026 Equity markets finished the week with a mixed tone as leadership continued to rotate across sectors and styles. While large-cap growth and technology-oriented exposures showed modest weakness, select income and defensive segments posted gains, underscoring an environment driven more by rotation than broad market momentum. Energy … Read more

Gold Continues to Outshine Equites

This fact may surprise quite a few investors. During the period from January 1, 2000, through August 31, 2025, gold bullion delivered significantly higher returns than the S&P 500. Throw in last week where the S&P 500 Index rose 0.3% compared to 4% for GLD, the most-traded gold ETF, and gold’s outperformance widens further. However, … Read more

Back to Investing Basics – Managing Costs

The first 100 days of Trump 2.0 have been anything but “business as usual.”  During the past several weeks with tariff wars and Administration policy changes taking center stage, huge volatility swings in both directions have greatly disturbed many investors.  Seemingly, there has seldom been a better time to be a volatility trader. All 5,200+ … Read more

Why Pay More for Your Investments?

Consumers have never been happy about paying more for the same (or less) from one place than from another.  It has only been within the past twenty years or so that investors have gotten wiser to this practice. Financial advisors, planners and the media have increasingly made investors more aware of how much less expensive … Read more

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

Seven Simple Rules for Owning ETFs and Exchange-Traded Products

Since the beginning of this month traditionally marks back-to-school time for many, I thought the timing was appropriate for this article on basic investor education with a focus on ETFs and similarly traded instruments.  The following seven actions reflect practices, many quite common, I’ve seen executed often that I consider major mistakes.  In fact, I strongly … Read more