Between inflation skyrocketing beyond expectations, the drumbeats of war and increasing global sanctions on Russian Oil, macroeconomic themes have dominated the 2022 stock market 15 weeks into the year. Throwing out derivatives-based ETFs, the top 11 US ETFs ranked by price performance this year are primarily focused on energy companies. All of the approximately 5,000 … 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
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
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
ValuEngine Capital Management LLC (VECM) is pleased to announce the addition of Jordan Kimmel to the team as the new Chief Equity Strategist and portfolio manager. VECM is a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) that invests based on the proprietary, quantitative research produced by ValuEngine Inc. It is an important partnership between two companies: ValuEngine conducts … Read more
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
By Herb Blank Research Affiliates and Dimensional Fund Advisors have been among the esteemed research and investment firms proclaiming that equally weighted portfolios will deliver superior performance to portfolios weighted by market capitalization also known as cap-weighted. This article explores to what extent that has been true in recent years. IVV is the iShares S&P … Read more
This week’s featured US equity ETFs, all focused on the US Consumer Staples Sector, are projected to outperform the market going forward. The similarities with last week’s blog end there. These all get a more modest 4 (buy) recommendation. Risk versus safety differentiate the last blog from this one. My last blog entry profiled ETF … Read more
By Herbert Blank Actively managed ETFs have evolved very differently from index-driven ETFs. Most of the assets have been accumulated in actively managed fixed income ETFs while the vast preponderance of Assets Under Management in Equity ETFs are index driven. Although there are many legacy reasons for this, the fact is that the efficiencies of … Read more
By Herbert Blank There are more than 100 US-listed ETFs categorized by Morningstar and others under ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance). All have an element of attempting to align investments with personally held social values. Under the hood, there are huge differences between many and subtle huge differences between others. Its a big subject, to … Read more