Stock markets endured another choppy trading week as hope and anxiety over the Euro zone debt drama sparked rallies one day and sell-offs the next. The much anticipated summit in Brussels left investors with a plateful of good news to digest on Friday as European leaders agreed to closer fiscal ties, although the United Kingdom refused to take part in the accord. “As with other meetings, this one hasn’t solved everything and likely will leave some disappointed, but overall has been taken by the markets as a big step in the right direction,” said Colin Cieszynski, CMC Markets analyst. Gold slipped lower during the week, with futures prices settling near $1,715 an ounce. [click to continue…]
Stocks have been drifting sideways all week as anxiety surrounding the upcoming European summit has proven to be an unavoidable cloud of uncertainty. Back and forth negotiations between European leaders have paved the way for choppy trading on both sides of the Atlantic ocean, although as a whole, volatility has been relatively low this week [...]
Domestic equity indexes snapped out of their loosing streak last week as investor confidence in the markets improved after a robust start to the holiday shopping season. The bulls charged through Wall Street on Wednesday after a global central bank initiative to lower the cost of dollar funding through swap arrangements sent a wave of [...]
The impressive pace of expansion in the ETF industry over the last several years has been well documented; continuous product development has resulted in the launch of more than 250 so far in 2011, and there are now more than 1,300 names in the ETF lineup. But while the depth of the ETF space has [...]
One of the biggest stories in the ETF world over the past few trading sessions has been the Gold SPDR (GLD) taking the top spot among most widely-held ETFs, finally surpassing SPY for the AUM crown. Yet, just as soon as this happened and gold hit $1,900/oz., investors saw a brutal sell-off in the precious [...]
As the ETF industry has continued to expand, now with 1,300+ products to choose from, investors now have more ways than ever to make a play on their favorite market, sector, or region. One of the biggest advantages of ETFs over their mutual fund counterparts is their abundant liquidity; they can be traded intraday just [...]
This week saw one of the worst strings of trading sessions in nearly a year as investors have grown increasingly worried that Congress will be unable to set aside their differences and come to terms on some sort of debt deal to avoid a default. If a deal is not passed soon, major credit rating [...]
This week saw yet more back-and-forth trading as major equity indexes posted their best single day in over a year, coupled by losses in other trading sessions. Perhaps the biggest story of the week are the talks on the U.S. debt deal, which seem to be all words and no action. While Congressmen seemed optimistic [...]
The latest ETF industry data from the National Stock Exchange is out, and after a small step back in May, exchange-traded products resumed their upward trajectory in June. Total ETP inflows totaled more than $8 billion last month, after May saw about $800 million in outflows–attributable in large part to big outflows from the S&P [...]
Investors returned quietly to Wall Street after the long holiday weekend as equity markets oscillated between small gains and losses for most of trading on Tuesday. Moody’s downgraded Portugal’s sovereign debt to junk-status, sending the euro lower in the currency markets and gold even higher. The hot yellow metal lead the way up and jumped [...]
The expansion of the ETF industry over the last several years has been truly impressive, as the product lineup has grown to more than 1,200 exchange-traded products and assets have passed the $1 trillion mark. But May marked a small step backwards, as ETF assets dipped slightly as a result of both weak equity market [...]
