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

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

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

BEWARE of BITO, the “ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF”

This is a departure from my usual blog, focusing on the newly launched ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO). Most ETFs analyzed in my blog articles are covered by ValuEngine with a handful of exceptions. ValuEngine does not cover any ETFs that do not hold stocks.  Moreover being newly launched, our price-based models cannot yet be … Read more

How Have Major Declines Affected S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 Investors?

In the wake of the Chinese Evergrande collapse, the S&P 500 shed more than 2% last Monday.  Analysts speculated that Chinese real estate contagion might be especially detrimental to Apple, Google and Netflix, all purported to have huge exposures to China. In fact, two major investment banks issued predictions last week that the market would … 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

Cap-Weighted vs. Equally Weighted S&P 500 ETFs – Which is Better?

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

Inside Bank and Financial ETFs: How Do They Compare?

Two other analysts whose blogs I monitor wrote in their midyear reports that they were bullish on bank and financial ETFs. My analysis using ValuEngine data below differs significantly. One analyst singled out KRE and the other’s favorite was FTXO.  They cited that the P/B and P/E ratios were considerably lower than the market averages.  … Read more

Drill, Baby, Drill? Oil ETFs

For each blog article, I scan through relevant groups of ETFs that relate to possible investment strategies.  Three ETFs from iShares by BlackRock stood out to me this week: IEO, IEZ, IYE.  All have ValuEngine’s strongest rating of 5 checks and all have fared very well in price performance during the past 6 months since … Read more

Medical Miracles: Inside Biotech ETFs

The events of the past twelve months focused a lot of attention on amazing and life-altering developments made possible by the global biotech industry.  Although the major names we heard were Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna, only the last was where the original research and patents that produced the CoVid-19 vaccines were developed.  … Read more