There was a hilarious Match.com commercial at the end of 2020 where the year, portrayed by Kristen Bell, became a perfect match for Satan. This is exactly how many equity investors felt about the first half of 2022. 2020 turned out to be a good year for the market as the government stepped in with … Read more
With the S&P 500 now officially in bear market territory, a major specter hanging over the market right now is the prospect of recession. Many experts say it is now inevitable. Morningstar’s research legend John Rekenthaler explained in a column Thursday that this bear market does not necessarily portend a recession and I agree. An underlying … Read more
I have written a lot in my blog analyzing and differentiating ESG, sustainable and impact ETFs. In 2020 and 2021 on a percentage basis, this segment was among the fastest growing in the ETF marketplace. Moreover, during most of that time, the market performance of these funds validated the concept that investing in ESG ETFs … Read more
The history of QQQ, Invesco QQQ Trust, is that it was a game-changer from the very start. Beginning in 1999 with the development of the Nasdaq-100 index by John Jacobs, then a Nasdaq executive and now a professor at Georgetown and Steven Bloom, the product was an overnight success. It was Jacobs’ vision to take … Read more
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
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
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
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
About a month ago, this blog profiled the defensive qualities of the three largest ETFs representing the US Consumer Staples Sector. One of our readers asked a logical question. How did DEF, the Invesco Defensive Equity ETF, stack up against the sector ETFs? After all, its objective of its rules-based methodology is to select companies … Read more