The beginning of earnings season last week provided a welcome distraction from the more troubling forums that have been capturing the attention of investors in recent weeks. The latest developments in Europe’s ongoing debt saga and twists and turns in Washington related to the fast-approaching debt ceiling have been steering markets in recent sessions. Those events will no doubt continue to influence asset prices this week, but investors will also have a slew of earnings reports from industry bellwethers to consider as well. But the slew of bellwethers reporting earnings this week should provide additional consideration for investors still trying to evaluate the status of the U.S. recovery.
The earnings reports form last week were generally positive, highlighted by Google’s impressive second quarter results. The search engine giant jumped more than 12% in after hours trading on Thursday after beating analyst expectations, reclaiming part of the spotlight from smaller tech companies that have attracted huge investment in recent weeks. [click to continue…]
The last several years have seen no shortage of firsts in the ETF industry. The size of the ETF roster is quickly approaching 1,300 products, thanks in large part to impressive innovation from more than three dozen different issuers. While some of the new launches have been duplicative in nature, the vast majority of the [...]
As the size of the ETF lineup has sped towards 1,300, more and more specialized and targeted products have been hitting the market. While most of ETF assets are in “plain vanilla” funds offering exposure to well-known benchmarks, the ETF roster is now filled with dozens of hyper-targeted products offering exposure to exotic and sophisticated [...]
Emerging markets have hit some rough patches in 2011, as concerns over debt in the developed world as well as a possible slowdown in some key developing countries has caused many to pull out of risky markets entirely. As a result, broad based funds such as VWO or EEM are down on the year and [...]
By many measures, the U.S. economy has come a long way since the depths of the most recent recession; since bottoming out in early 2009, most equity indexes have climbed sharply higher and reclaimed much of the ground lost during the preceding free fall. GDP growth has swung back to the positive territory, the U.S. [...]
The debate on our nation’s dependence on oil has been a major issue for quite some time now. Crude oil is a finite resource, and one that we will eventually run out of–though estimates of just how long that will take stretch across the board. But as the largest consumers of crude (roughly 7.3 million [...]
With five months of 2011 in the books, the year has already been quite memorable in the extreme weather department, both in the U.S. and abroad. Strong snowstorms in the early part of the year soon gave way to massive flooding across the Mississippi River area, before heavy storms caused tornadoes to break out across much of [...]
After a rough 2010, alternative energy equities have been swinging back and forth all year long without establishing a clear trend. With 2011 being quite a busy year thus far, the only real attention that alternative energies have received has been quite negative, as many have called for the end of nuclear power after the [...]
Thanks to inflationary pressures and booming emerging markets, a number of key commodities have seen their values soar so far in 2011. While this trend has been especially pronounced in the energy and food commodity markets, precious metals have also been a huge beneficiary of the movement as many traders and investors have piled into [...]
Last week marked a shortened trading week in observance of Good Friday, but that does not mean that investors were left with an uneventful four days. On the contrary, markets went haywire last week as a downgrade of the outlook on U.S. debt crushed markets one day, only to see them rally on strong earnings [...]
After months of speculation sparked by an SEC filing announcing Grail Advisors was near an agreement to be acquired, the future for a pioneer in the active ETF space is a bit more clear. Minneapolis-based Ameriprise Financial has reportedly agreed to acquire Grail, giving the financial giant the exemptive relief required to launch actively-managed ETFs.
