I will often feature stocks rated buy or strong buy in highly rated sectors. This one is a departure. The healthcare sector is most commonly represented by the Select Sector SPDR Healthcare ETF, XLV. It faced a challenging year in 2024, underperforming the S&P 500 Index by a staggering 22.4%. This massive performance shortfall resulted … Read more
What Can We Learn from Sector ETFs? My last blog focused on the 3rd quarter rotation from large cap-weighted growth ETFs to index ETFs that were more value-oriented, equally weighted and/or mid- and small-cap focused. Sector ETFs are often used for rotation strategies in addition to being vehicles for long-term investment. There are 132 sector … Read more
Farewell and thank you to 2023 which exceeded almost everybody’s expectations after a dismal 2022 and predictions of a dire recession. This blog was more positive than most, projecting a 5% to 10% gain for the S&P 500 vs. the actual price gain of 23.9%. Now it’s on to 2024. Let’s start with our quarterly … Read more
The third quarter of 2023 is now history. The September effect overwhelmed mildly positive returns in July and August to submerge all six benchmark indexes we monitor quarterly into the red. Although the order of best to worst varies among the six indexes, one commonality is having September as the worst historical month, both in … Read more