Investors’ confidence has taken a serious beating over the past few months as debt drama on both sides of the Atlantic ocean has paved the way for volatile price action across financial markets. Despite better-than-expected economic data releases on the home front, Euro zone debt woes have definitively taken center stage; sentiment on Wall Street has been largely influenced by rumors and headlines from overseas, while positive fundamental developments have been largely ignored. Amidst the ongoing uncertainty, many have turned to traditional safe haven asset classes, with gold being a popular choice [see Cheapskate Hedge Fund ETFdb Portfolio]. However, the precious yellow metal has lost a bit of its luster throughout this recent turmoil, as the hot commodity has failed to provide investors with much of a cushion.
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Van Eck has begun the process of converting six HOLDRS products offered by Merrill Lynch into traditional ETFs that will be included under the Market Vectors lineup, offering investors an opportunity to exchange their receipts in HOLDRS trusts for shares in the new ETFs. The exchange requires affirmative action on the part of investors, meaning [...]
It’s no secret that the euro-zone has been the center of market turmoil for the past few weeks as well as a lingering issue for the past year. The thorn in investors’ side comes from a slew of fiscal issues that have already led to one unsuccessful bailout, prompting another austerity package that has yet to be put in [...]
As the ETF world has rapidly developed, a number of issuers have begun to explore niche markets with hyper-targeted exposure for investors looking for unique allocations. Such innovation has brought products dedicated to smartphones, cloud computing, fertilizer, and even the fishing industry. At first, investors may write some of these newer options off as silly [...]
Although many emerging markets still have excellent growth prospects, they have been hammered in recent weeks thanks to a ‘risk off’ trade in equities. Broad funds targeting this space, such as VWO or EEM, have fallen sharply in this time period, declining by nearly 16.8% in the past quarter alone. While this may sound bad, [...]
With three quarters of 2011 officially in the books, it is now safe to say that the year has not played out as many investors had hoped it might. After coming flying out of the gates–most major benchmarks were solidly in positive territory after the first quarter–a perfect storm of negative developments has conspired to [...]
The new quarter started on a down note across the board, as more fears over Greece and concerns over a hard landing in China weighed on markets. The losses were pretty significant in most sectors although the worst of it was contained to the financial and basic materials corners of the market. Beyond these two [...]
Investing in developed markets has been an extremely tough task as of late thanks to sluggish growth and debt woes in a variety of countries. In light of this, perceived ‘safe haven’ countries saw a great deal of inflows in this environment, leading to huge gains for markets such as Switzerland and other highly-rated nations. Yet, with [...]
Thanks to the poor economic situation plaguing America, a number of proposals have been released in order to try to end this malaise. Massive stimulus was thrown at the market by leaders in D.C. while the Fed sought to do its part by embarking on multiple rounds of quantitative easing. These purchases of government bonds helped to [...]
Over the past few months, the Swiss franc has attracted considerable interest from traders and long term investors alike as concerns continue to mount over other major currencies such as the dollar and the euro. Thanks to this, the value of the franc has surged against the euro, up to all-time high levels. While many [...]
To call the last few weeks volatile would be an understatement. Markets have some of their most violent trading days in recent memory, as the beginning of August brought multiple days with swings higher than 5% in major equities indices. Amid a botched debt negotiation and a downgrade of U.S. debts by Standard and Poor’s, [...]
