Over the past few months, one of the key issues that has been facing the U.S. is the enormous budget deficit and how best to get this debt under control. The U.S. has already lost its prized ‘AAA’ credit rating according to S&P and it appears that others may follow if more steps aren’t taken to reign in spending. Thanks to this, a legislative ‘supercommittee’ has been set up in order to find ways to cut spending, while at the same time, allowing the nation to grow. The task is pretty immense as the 12 person group is supposed to somehow agree on an additional $1.5 trillion in savings over a ten year period, not an easy find given how deadlocked and partisan our Congress has become. [click to continue…]
The month of May was a generally disappointing stretch for investors, as both international and domestic equity markets struggled to overcome obstacles new and old. Commodities, which had been a nice source of absolute returns for much of the last year, fell on hard times as well; precious metals went into a brief freefall, and [...]
Equity markets finished mixed last week as the Dow managed to outperform both of its more broadly-allocated counterparts thanks to robust earnings reports from GE and IBM. Meanwhile, financials helped to push the S&P 500 down by about 0.8% on the week while the Nasdaq sank almost two percent thanks to ongoing worries across the [...]
Although growth prospects remain dim and job creation remains minimal, investors continue to snatch up equities thanks to a weak dollar and hopes that the Fed will resume its quantitative easing program in the not-so-distant future. However, speculation of this program and brighter futures in emerging markets are combining to produce some collateral damage, as [...]
A second week of earnings did little to clarify the market’s direction despite quality reports out of a host of important American corporations. After another flat Monday, markets surged on Tuesday after a strong report from Apple boosted hopes for the consumer discretionary sector as well as the electronics market. However, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke [...]
Few industries will look back on the last several years fondly, remembering a stretch of surging demand and reliable sources of organic growth. But for aerospace and defense firms, the last decade has been a remarkable run, including the last two years that saw many other corners of the economy battered by the recession. Ongoing–and [...]
Last week investors were extremely disappointed with America’s largest conglomerate GE, which released its quarterly earnings on Friday. The company earned $3.11 billion, or 28 cents a share, compared with $2.69 billion, or 25 cents, in the year-ago period. But revenues slipped by 4%, sending shares plummeting by more than 4% and it putting several [...]
While most investors are relatively familiar with metals such as gold and copper, few know anything about an increasingly vital group of resources known as “rare earths.” As the name suggests, these metals are very scarce, but are needed for a variety of modern technologies ranging from alternative fuels to consumer electronics to defense and [...]
Happy Fourth of July from the team at ETF Database! Given the chaos of recent weeks in financial markets, investors should be thrilled to relax with fireworks, family gatherings, and good old-fashioned barbecues. To celebrate the Fourth, we take a timeout from talks of double dips, oil spills, unemployment to highlight five all-American ETFs that [...]
Wednesday was an eventful day for Dow component Boeing (BA), one of the largest global aircraft manufacturers and third largest defense contractor in the world. While the company has seen a lot of bad press in regards to the lengthy delays to its 787 Dreamliner plane, two events early Wednesday look to give the company [...]
During the ongoing recovery effort, most sectors of the global economy have moved higher together. But not all industries have received an equal boost during the dramatic turnaround. After markets bottomed out in March last year, it was the financial and technology sectors that led the rally. In 2010, one of the least sexy sectors [...]
