News
To help investors keep up with the markets, we present our ETF Scorecard. The Scorecard takes a step back and looks at how various asset classes across the globe are performing. The weekly performance is from last Friday’s open to this week Thursday’s close.
- Oil prices rose to $33 a barrel, which had a positive impact on U.S. stocks. This was partly due to Russia’s announcement that it is cutting production of about 500,000 barrels per day.
- The Fed did not change interest rates this week and stated its optimism about the future of the U.S. economy.
- The conference board released the latest U.S. consumer confidence figure of 98.1 this Tuesday, which surpassed the consensus of 96.6.
- Pending home sales remained flat in December.
- The U.S. manufacturing sector suffered as new orders on durable goods dropped 5.1% in December due to low oil prices and a strong dollar.
- European shares are in a downturn due to low earnings and poor bank performance.
- China’s central bank released 360 billion yuan ($54.7 billion) through reverse-repos last Tuesday in an effort to boost the economy. This has been the largest money input done by the central bank in a single day in the last three years.
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Risk Appetite Review
- The overall market as measured by the S&P 500 ETF (SPY ) was slightly down by 0.35% for the week.
- The high-beta ETF (SPHB ) was the worst performer in the group with a 1.51% loss for the week.
- The low-volatility ETF (SPLV ) was the best performer in the group with a 1.18% gain for the week.
Major Index Review
- All major indexes were flat for the week and down for the rolling month.
- The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM ) was the best performer for the week with a 1.2% gain.
- The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY ) was the best performer for the rolling month with the lowest loss of 7.69%.
- The iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM ) was the worst performer for the week and the rolling month with a 0.95% and 12.54% loss, respectively.
Foreign Equity Review
- Foreign tracking ETFs had mixed results for the week.
- The best performer for the week and the rolling month was the Market Vector Russia ETF Trust (RSX ) with a gain of 7.82% and a loss of 2.41%, respectively.
- The Chinese ETF (FXI ) was the worst performer for the week and the rolling month with a 1.18% and a 15.44% loss, respectively.
Commodities Review
- Almost all commodities are up for the week.
- The United States Oil Fund (USO ) was the best performer for the week, up 6.71%, but the worst performer for the rolling month, down 12.30%.
- The PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund (DBA ) was the worst performer for the week with a 0.74% loss.
- The Gold ETF (GLD ) was the best performer for the rolling month, up 3.96%.
Currency Review
- The Euro (FXE ) was the best performer for the week with a gain of 1.19%.
- The U.S. dollar (UUP ) was down slightly for the week and is the worst performer with a 0.74% loss.
- The Japanese yen (FXY ) was the best performer for the rolling month with a gain of 1.19%.
- The worst performer for the rolling month was the British pound (FXB ), which is down by 3.62%.
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Disclosure: No positions at time of writing.
