Tuesday opens what investors hope will be the eighth consecutive monthly increase for the Dow, as risky asset classes have continued to tack higher in recent weeks despite some Euro zone jitters and concerns about slowing job growth in the U.S. As May Day rallies were carried out across Europe in a new era of austerity, market remained relatively flat throughout the day there.
Australian stocks and the Aussie dollar saw significant activity on Tuesday after the Australian central bank announced a hefty half point rate cut for the struggling Australian economy, which has seen its currency surge against major rivals in recent months. The iShares MSCI Australia Index Fund (EWA) was up slightly on the news, with the exchange rate impact preventing a more substantial gain. The CurrencyShares Australian Dollar Trust (FXA) plummeted by more than 1% on news of the large rate cut. FXA is still well into positive territory for the year, with the underlying currency having appreciated materially against the greenback.
The IQ Australia Small Cap ETF (KROO), which holds smaller Australian stocks and makes a bigger allocation to commodity producing stocks, slid by about 0.8% to open the day. [click to continue…]
Though the year is still very young, 2012 has gotten off to a promising start for investors. Major stock indexes have generally climbed higher throughout the first few weeks thanks to a number of encouraging data releases and reduced anxiety over the potential fallout from the European debt crisis [see also Early ETF Stars of [...]
The year-end periods provides the ETF industry with a couple of opportunities to flex its collective muscle; performance comparisons generally tend to favor those products with lower expense ratios–a defining feature of exchange-traded funds. But early January also puts another benefit of exchange-traded products into focus: enhanced tax efficiency relative to traditional mutual funds. The [...]
Over the course of the last few years, the ETF space has grown immensely. What started off as a handful of low-cost, broad-based funds has now turned into a space of nearly 1,400 products with investment methodologies ranging across the board. The innovation in the space has led to a number of unique products that [...]
With more than 1,100 ETPs now trading, investors and advisors have access to more asset classes and investment strategies than ever before. But it can also be challenging for advisors and investors to navigate through all the ETF options and identify those that meet their investment objectives–especially with new funds debuting on a regular basis. [...]
As a modest recovery has begun to take place in the United States and elsewhere around the world, investors have begun to cycle back into discretionary firms which are poised to surge should consumers continue to open up their pocketbooks and spend. Arguably, the most discretionary sector of all, the gaming industry, has seen its [...]
Last year was a good year for most asset classes, as investor portfolios continued to recover from the recent recession. The difference in performance between many comparable funds was significant, and many of the best performers of 2010 are relatively small funds that maintain considerably smaller asset bases than their more popular competitors. Below, we [...]
While the economic outlook remains uncertain going into the second half of 2010, many large corporations have posted solid earnings that have handily beaten expectations. These robust reports have helped to jump-start the sagging stock market but have failed to make a meaningful dent in the unemployment number which still stands at an uncomfortably high [...]
Taking a quick look around the investing landscape, one might not immediately suspect that we’ve entered the dog days of summer; there is no shortage of bears who have seemingly come out of hibernation. But not everyone is down on the economic outlook with bulls making a case for a strong second half of 2010. [...]
Over the last several years, crude oil prices have taken investors on a wild ride. When the global economy was humming along, prices skyrocketed to a historic high of more than $140 per barrel. But from that peak, the downfall was both swift and severe; prices plummeted to almost $30 a barrel as economies around [...]
Despite a sluggish economy, the Market Vectors Gaming ETF (BJK) has been on winning streak since the start of February, posting a gain of nearly 6% over the last week and a half. While some of the rebound is likely due to a slight increase in the confidence of an economic recovery, many gaming investors [...]
