All aboard the roller coaster! Market activity this past week was all sorts of absurd; equity indexes fluctuated wildly between huge gains one day and devastating losses the next. Investors are still visibly shaken from the debt ceiling drama of last week coupled with S&P’s downgrade of U.S. credit quality, which triggered a brutal sell off on Monday to start the week. Wall Street seemingly regained its balance on Tuesday, only to sell-off in the final hours of trading after Bernanke announced the Fed’s intent to keep rates unchanged until mid-2013. Fear in the markets continues to pave the way higher for gold and the precious metal yet again soared to new all-time-highs, hitting $1,817 an ounce on Wednesday evening. Against this chaotic backdrop, nearly all model ETF portfolios were deep in losses this week, while our cautious analysis served us quite well during one of the worst weeks on Wall Street.
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Monday was a dismal day on Wall Street as investors prepared for the worst and ran far from equity markets after the release of S&P’s downgrade of U.S. credit quality to AA+ from its coveted AAA rating. Panic-selling caught on like wildfire and domestic equity indexes slid by as much as 6% on Monday alone, [...]
Wall Street plunged into the abyss last week as investors prepared for the worst after the ECB and Bank of Japan intervened in the markets, sending widespread waves of fear, and inducing one of the worst sell-offs that the market has seen since the dismal days of 2008. Domestic equity indexes fell over 4% on [...]
American equity markets continued their run in Thursday trading as a solid Chicago PMI and declining jobless claims helped markets to end the quarter on a strong note. The Dow rose by 1.3% in the session, leading the broader indexes as the Nasdaq rose by 1.2% and the S&P 500 gained 1.0%. Commodities were more [...]
American equity markets once again finished the day lower, marking the sixth straight session in the red for U.S. benchmarks. The Dow slumped by 22 points while the S&P and Nasdaq posted heavier losses of, respectively, 0.4% and 1.0% on the session. The biggest losers came in the tech and financial sectors as banks slumped [...]
Teucrium, the Vermont-based firm behind the ultra-popular Corn Fund (CORN) that has plans to launch several additional commodity-specific ETPs, has laid the groundwork for another fund that would approach exposure to commodities in a new way. In a recent SEC filing, the firm detailed the Teucrium Agricultural Fund, which would offer exposure to agricultural commodities [...]
U.S. equity markets capped off the first quarter on a mixed note as surging oil prices and a lukewarm unemployment claims report left stocks on rocky footing heading into April. The Dow, which at one point was up about 30 points on the session, finished the day lower by 31 while the S&P 500 finished [...]
American equity markets rose modestly in Wednesday’s session as gains in the technology and basic materials sector helped to carry the market slightly higher on the day. The Dow gained 68 points while the S&P 500 rose by just 0.3% and the Nasdaq gained 0.5%, boosted in large part by solid performances out of the [...]
IndexIQ, the ETF issuer best known for its lineup of hedge fund replication and county-specific small cap ETFs, announced the launch of a new fund today targeting an increasingly popular and relevant corner of the global equity market. The Global Agribusiness Small Cap ETF (CROP) will track the IQ Global Agribusiness Small Cap Index, a [...]
U.S. equity markets continued their slide in Tuesday trading as fears over a nuclear disaster in Japan weighed on global equities. The Dow was down close to 1.2% while the broader indexes suffered similar losses of 1.3% for the Nasdaq and 1.1% for the S&P 500. Meanwhile, commodities continued to take a beating as gold [...]
February marked another month of growth for the U.S. ETF industry, though the pace of inflows slowed a bit from recent months. According to data from the National Stock Exchange assets stood at $1.055 trillion at the end of February, an increase of about 3.5% over the previous month. February inflows totaled $7.4 billion, down [...]
