As global economies grapple with the challenge of unwinding massive stimulus plans in an orderly manner, central bank meetings have taken on a new importance. Following a relatively uneventful meeting of the Federal Reserve, Brazil’s central bank took center stage this week, deciding to keep rates steady at a record low of 8.75%. Some investors were surprised by the move since inflation, recently recorded at 4.83%, has surged above the Bank’s target of 4.5%. The news had an interesting effect on Brazilian markets; the iShares MSCI Brazil Index Fund (EWZ) lost close to 1.5% and the WisdomTree Dreyfus Brazilian Real Fund (BZF) dropped more than 0.9%. [click to continue…]
Federal Reserve meetings are always among the most anticipated and closely scrutinized events in the investment community, as specific decisions on key interest rates and more general observations on the state of the economy have the power to set off waves of either buying or selling on Wall Street and around the globe. Central bank meetings have lost a bit of their luster in the last year, as ongoing concerns of a double-dip recession and weak fundamentals in the economy have essentially removed any possibility of a rate hike and taken much of the suspense out of the gathering. [click to continue…]
For investors in the process of rebalancing their portfolio or taking a step back from the stock and bond markets, money market accounts have historically provided an opportunity to generate returns over the short run while maintaining the flexibility to redeploy assets at any time. During periods of sustained economic growth and bull market rallies, [...]
As interest in ETF investing has surged in recent years, issuers have rushed to expand their product lines into every corner of the investable universe. The first generation of ETF products consisted mostly of equity funds designed to track well-known benchmarks, and while the vast majority of ETF assets remains in these “plain vanilla” funds, [...]
Following a year that saw some of the worst performances in recent memory, many asset classes have bounced back in 2009. But some have performed better than others, and as the year draws to a close we take a look at some of the best-performing ETFs. The year’s top gainers include a few of the [...]
The steady decline of the U.S. dollar has been one of the major stories of the second half of 2009, with a “perfect storm” of economic conditions sending the greenback to new lows against many of its major rivals. While a declining dollar isn’t nearly the problem that some make it out to be – [...]
Stocks finished Tuesday in the red following disappointing revenue reports from several companies, concerns on the housing market, and weak PPI data. The ETFdb 60 Index, a benchmark of the investable universe available through ETFs, declined 4.76 (0.5%) to close at 1,022.68, with losers outnumbering gainers by about two-to-one.
On Friday afternoon, thousands of Chicagoans watched in stunned silence as the Second City, long thought to be the overwhelming favorite to be awarded the right to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, was the first city to be eliminated from contention.
Chicago’s loss turned out to be Rio de Janeiro’s gain. The Brazilian city beat out [...]
With a roller coaster six months behind us that saw no shortage of interesting twists and turns and unsuspected headlines, we’ve finally reached the midway point of 2009. Ahead of us is the highly anticipated “second half of 2009,” which for months we’ve heard will hold returns to growth, a recovering economy, and enough green [...]
