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

2nd Quarter US Benchmark ETF Update

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

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

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

Indexed Bond ETFs to Gain Assets and Liquidity

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

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

ValuEngine new strategies, Podcast introduction

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

Active ETF Gurus vs. GURU Index ETF

This week’s featured ETF is GURU, Global X Guru Index based on a specific “smart money” hedge fund strategy. Guru’s site claims that the index engineered by Global X and provided by German customized index specialist Solactive AG allows everyday investors to access the high conviction investments among the largest, most sophisticated hedge funds in … Read more