Incredible Chart on Trader Margin Levels and Market Bubble

October 24, 2013

Are we looking at a market bubble here? Take a look at this chart and consider. (click to enlarge) On one hand, I was astounded by the almost perfect correlation between investor margin levels and actual S&P500 Index valuations. It should be a pretty good fit I suppose, assuming people use margin to go long, […]

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Macro View: Taper is On, Get Positioned

August 11, 2013

The Fed’s bond buying spree is the largest central bank action ever. Its reversal, and eventual exit, will be even bigger. Recent data point to the fact that the Fed can and should slow or cease its purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. America’s shrinking deficit Believe it or not, the monstrous American deficit of […]

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A Market-beating Portfolio of Strategy ETFs

July 28, 2013

The rise of the strategy ETFs and tactical asset allocation has some worried that exchange-traded funds are losing their ties to traditional indexing. John Bogle of Vanguard says that ETF trading is no way to invest. Barron’s recently penned a piece on how ETFs have become a proxy through which financial advisors can deploy speculative […]

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Bet on the Best Ideas of Bill Gross

July 24, 2013

Here are ETF Base we’ve covered everything about interest rates, to which dividend ETF is best positioned for rising rates, or how to protect use target maturity bond funds. We’ve even uncovered some rockstar junk bond managers. But what we haven’t discussed is whether or not it makes sense to align with Bill Gross in […]

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Market Cap Weighting Weakness: Tesla Joins QQQ

July 21, 2013

Tesla (TSLA), an American automobile manufacturer, will join the NASDAQ 100 Index (QQQ). It will replace Oracle (ORCL), which is moving to the NYSE. Becoming part of an index is a relatively normal happening for an up and coming company, but for ETF investors, it puts market cap weighting back in focus. Market cap weighting […]

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Bitcoin ETF: Get Ready for Bubble Mania

July 14, 2013

The Winklevoss twins of Facebook fame intend to launch a new ETF to track the price of Bitcoins, an online cryptocurrency that enjoyed a meteoric rise during bank crises in Europe. Bitcoin is an anonymous, peer-to-peer currency that is used for everything from purchasing electronics to money laundering and drug purchases. One of the biggest […]

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Insurance Stock ETFs for Higher Interest Rates

July 7, 2013

The market has its eyes on Bernanke’s “tapering” of quantitative easing. Should the Fed taper its bond buying, rates will inevitably head higher as the supply of dollars chasing fixed-income investments will dwindle, forcing rates higher to lure more loanable funds. Insurance companies are some of the few beneficiaries of higher interest rates. Insurance companies […]

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Meredith Whitney: Finally Right, but for All the Wrong Reasons

July 2, 2013

The rout in municipal bonds couldn’t be more sudden. As rates headed higher, investors sold off municipal bonds, pushing the largest municipal bond fund, iShares National AMT-Free Muni Bond ETF (MUB), to its biggest discount in history. The bond market is much less liquid than the stock market. Bond ETFs often drive the fixed-income market, […]

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Things to Consider Before Investing

June 24, 2013

While the housing market has been very volatile over the past five years, many people have been able to navigate through the housing crisis and have continued to turn impressive profits by investing in under-valued real estate. If you are interested in real estate and are looking to make some extra money, you also could […]

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Why Your Target Date Fund is Leaving You Behind

June 23, 2013

The U.S. Equity markets are rocking this year. Up 15.04% after dividends the S&P 500 index (SPY) is on track for one of its best years since 2009. Not all investors are taking part in the upside, however. Traditional asset allocation leaves some target date funds out of the running for excellent market performance. Are […]

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Sponsored Video: Is There a Gray Area for Insider Trading?

June 17, 2013

This post is sponsored by PA Consulting: We hear the phrase insider trading all the time – because it’s rampant.  That’s “market efficiency” for ya, huh?  Well, it’s not always so black and white.  I was just thinking about an example within my firm where something that used to be allowed (or wasn’t disallowed really) […]

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Target Maturity ETFs Shelter Your Bond Holdings from Rising Rates

June 16, 2013

Some ETFs have billions in assets. Some have mere millions. Last week I wrote about one of my favorite dividend ETF, which had assets in the millions. This week I’ll uncover another hidden gem in the bond market: the target maturity fund. A target maturity fund invests in bonds with a fixed maturity date. For […]

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WisdomTree Taps into Dividend Growth Investing

June 10, 2013

Previously, I laid the case for why yield-hungry investors were driving investment returns. Yields are depressed in every corner of the market, from risk-free treasuries to riskier levered REITs and junk bonds. That doesn’t stop new ETF creation, however. Dividends are Main Street’s way into Wall Street; even Jim Cramer hopped on board to call […]

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Dogs Trump the Market Despite Dividend Fallout

June 2, 2013

The Dogs of the Dow strategy might as well be an initiation to the stock market. It’s often the first “strategy” that investors run into on their way into the market. As simple as the Dogs of the Dow strategy is, an ETF based on a variant of this popular investing strategy is beating the […]

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Smaller Stocks are Paying Off this Year

May 28, 2013

Smaller companies are known for higher risks, but higher returns. In broad bull markets, small cap companies generally lead. This year, that has been half true. Leading investments in 2013 are concentrated in anything yield (from junk debt to utilities) and low volatility consumer staples. Following these winners are smaller stocks and midcap indexes. Going […]

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Market is Up for 18 Straight Tuesdays – Investing Strategy?

May 19, 2013

We’re now in the midst of 18 straight up Tuesdays for the S&P500.  While this is a statistical anomaly, surely there is someone out there who thinks there’s an investing strategy to exploit this “trend”.  Perhaps buy leveraged ETFs on Wednesday nights and sell them Thursday nights?  Perhaps buy call options for even more leverage?  […]

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An ETF for Rising Inflation

May 12, 2013

Low interest rates are starting to fuel an economic fire. In the financial markets, I believe low-yield alternatives are leading investors to pay up for less attractive dividend funds and junk bonds. (The Wall Street Journal said the same this week). In the housing market, low interest rates are pushing investors back into single family […]

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3 Signs Yield Investors are Driving the Market

May 5, 2013

Investors have been on the hunt for yield ever since policy pushed investors to risk assets to generate any real return. Yields on US Treasuries, certificates of deposit, and short-term corporate bonds is without question well below the rate of inflation. Yields are certainly lower than the true rate of inflation as defined by the […]

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3 Reasons It’s Not Too Late to Jump On This Rally

May 3, 2013

You’ve probably seen news accounts recently that equities markets in various countries are hitting new highs and continue to rally in spite of whatever alarming news exists in the economy, Europe, and the geopolitical landscape.  There are good reasons for this, while other facets of this rally leave many scratching their heads.  Regardless of what […]

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How Far Should Investors Go in the Quest for Diversification

April 26, 2013

One of the key tenants of successful investing is proper diversification.  But can diversifying assets and classes be taken to such an extreme that it’s detrimental to returns?  Back when I was a more active investor trading individual stocks on a more routine basis, I used to question the wisdom of professional fund managers owning […]

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A Low(er) Volatility Mid Cap Fund

April 21, 2013

When iShares isn’t too busy leading the world of exchange traded products, it’s designing new funds to take public. One of its newest launches, the MSCI USA Size Factor ETF (SIZE) could be a winner given its focus as a new, lower volatility mid cap ETF. This new ETF from iShares will track the MSCI […]

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Gold is Out – Is the Fear Trade Over?

April 14, 2013

This week gold entered bear market territory, plunging by more than 20% from the market highs set in 2011. Gold also lost its correlation to equities, seeing as the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) is off by 10% while equities, as measured by the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), are up 12%. Is the gold rush […]

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Japanese Stocks are In Play: Should You Follow?

April 8, 2013

The Bank of Japan is engaged in the most aggressive quantitative easing in the world (here’s what happened previously to ETFs that went wild following US QE Announcements). If you thought Ben Bernanke’s asset purchases were something, you’ll see the Bank of Japan as a lunatic. After the election of Shinzo Abe, investors moved boatloads […]

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The 4% Rule is Dead, but these ETFs Might Help

March 31, 2013

The days of consistent 4% annual withdrawals from a retirement fund are long gone. A paper from Morningstar rejects the idea that anyone can pull 4% per year from their retirement balance with any confidence.  Overconfidence is common, but not prudent. Here’s the skinny: Low rates crush income potential – At the time the 4% […]

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Why Transportation ETFs Should be a Core Portfolio Holding

March 24, 2013

Transportation has all the makings of an excellent business. It’s a consolidated industry with a product that is necessary for day to day life on planet Earth. While it isn’t very exciting as a business model, over the long term the transportation sector has rewarded investors with spectacular returns. It’s also extraordinarily cyclical. As anyone […]

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Pros and Cons of Active Trading

March 21, 2013

Volumes have been written on the topics of both “beating the market” and individual investing, but also on passive strategies.  In my view, over the long haul, it’s much more important to get money INTO your investment accounts and put it to work compared to whether you can beat the market or not.  But once […]

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Finding the Best Exposure in Homebuilding ETFs

March 18, 2013

Homebuilding ETFs are making it much too easy for new investors to make the biggest mistake of them all: taking an ETF’s name at face value. While there are three ETFs that claim to give investors to homebuilding, the stocks these funds hold and the proportions in which they hold them varies dramatically: SPDR Homebuilders […]

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Buy Falling Angels for Higher Yields

March 10, 2013

Market Vectors thinks that the best way to get ahead in the bond market is with the “Falling Angels,” bonds that have fallen from investment grade to below investment grade. Over time, companies that have moved from investment grade to junk have given their debt investors higher returns. Market Vectors has a new fund for […]

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Here’s Why Vanguard’s Dividend Growth ETF is a Top Pick

March 3, 2013

Dividend stocks are hot with investors who realize that most historical stock market gains have come from dividends. The role of dividends in investment performance does not go unnoticed. Dividends also have a few other advantages for the investor: They serve as a guide for earnings quality. Many companies generate only accrual earnings, rarely generating […]

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Is This the Start of a Bear Market in Gold?

February 24, 2013

Famed investing legends are dumping their gold holdings. George Soros dropped his stash of gold (held in the popular SPDR Gold Trust (GLD)) while Louis Moore Bacon sold all of his gold holdings in his Moore Capital Management fund with the exception of a modest position in a physical gold ETF, Sprott Physical Gold Trust […]

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Unintended Consequences of QE and Low Interest Rates

February 21, 2013

I couldn’t help but notice today’s note from the EIA that if you exclude the 2008 spike in oil prices (to be fair, seemingly a unique anomaly and unsustained) Americans are paying the highest portion of paychecks toward gasoline prices in the past 3 decades.  30 years.  This chart tells the story, but consider the […]

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Bet on Higher Interest Rates with ETFs

February 17, 2013

Interest rates can’t stay low forever? Or can they? This week famed value investor Jim Grant announced to a group of ETF insiders that he was short the bond market, making an explicit call that he believed that rates would rise faster than yields could reward investors. The ETF space offers several opportunities for going […]

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Junk Bonds: Adjusting for “The Great Rotation”

February 10, 2013

January 2013 was marked with the concept of a “Great Rotation” from fixed income to stocks. The premise is simple: after more than 30 years of a bull market in bonds, investors buying today are buying at record low yields. Relative to 2% on a 10 year treasury bond, a dividend-paying stock at a fair […]

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The Buyback ETF that Crushes the Market Year After Year

February 5, 2013

With interest rates at record lows, corporate cash balances at record highs, and tax policy visibility as low as it could ever be, corporate spending on buybacks came in 50% higher in 2012 than the average in the preceding decade. The turn towards buybacks is clear; how it will affect total returns isn’t as certain. […]

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Bank on the American Consumer with Retail ETFs

January 27, 2013

The economy seems to be in recovery. Housing starts are at a five-year high, employment numbers are coming in positive, and Americans have deleveraged significantly from the credit bubble of the 2000s and generational low mortgage rates have certainly helped improve US consumer balance sheets. Moving your portfolio to position for a change in consumer […]

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ETF News and Links – January 2013

January 22, 2013

Here’s the last roundup of interesting news and links related to ETFs and Investing from around the web: New ETF Launch: Risk/Momentum ETFs (Yahoo!Finance) China ETFs – a Closer Look (China’s up big this year so far!) ETF Database New Junior MLP ETF Launching (just watch the daily offset error!) Index Universe Watch That Premium! […]

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The 8 Largest ETFs on Earth

January 20, 2013

We’re currently watching the “great rotation” from stocks to bonds as investors move funds from one asset class to another. Meanwhile, ETF leader Blackstone says it sees a secular shift to exchange-traded funds and top asset managers are engaged in a fee war in a race to the bottom on low ETF fees. So what’s […]

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Searching for the Best MLP ETF

January 13, 2013

Master limited partnerships are one of the fastest growing investments on Wall Street. Oil and gas companies divest high cost assets with MLP issues while investors find MLPs attractive for their high yields and tax benefits. Investors who favor sector ETFs as a way to get broad exposure have plenty of choice in master limited […]

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5 Hottest ETFs of 2013 YTD

January 10, 2013

With the New Year upon us and the Fiscal Cliff deadline resolved (albeit temporarily), it’s worth taking stock of what the hottest sectors and ETF themes are thus far in 2013 to give a sense for where the market is hot and where you may want to focus efforts on for the remainder of the […]

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Microcap ETFs: Indexing Leads Investors to Low Returns

January 6, 2013

The idea of indexing is to produce returns that are good enough; returns equal to a benchmark that fits an investor’s risk tolerance. In most of the investable markets, indexing works perfectly. Previously, we’ve talked about how indexing does not work so well in less liquid bond markets, with active management producing alpha by avoiding […]

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Consumer Staples ETFs for Lower Volatility

December 31, 2012

Consumer staples companies – those that make goods that consumers buy time and time again – are known for being leaders in low volatility returns from the equity markets. Consumer staples companies include well known names like Procter & Gamble (PG), Coca-Cola Co (KO), or Colgate-Palmolive (CL). Why Invest in Consumer Staples Consumer staples stocks […]

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IPO ETF Delivers Stellar Returns Despite Several IPO Flops

December 23, 2012

Despite well-known IPO disasters like Facebook (FB), the First Trust IPOX Index ETF (FPX) was the best performing of all strategy ETFs in 2012, delivering returns 8% higher than the S&P 500 after dividends. The ETF continues to test the idea that IPOs are much better for the business than they are investors. While the […]

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Holiday Travel – Stats and Stories [Sponsored Video]

December 20, 2012

This post is sponsored by BMW. For 2012, AAA projects 93.3 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more from home during the year-end holidays, which is 1.6% greater the 91.8 million people who traveled last year.  This stat alone got me thinking a bit.  Does this mean the economy is really improving?  I mean […]

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Merger Arbitrage ETFs Just Got Better

December 16, 2012

The deals space is heating up – one analyst says to expect a $20 billion merger in 2013 – as companies think about how to use cash balances and low interest rates to their advantage. For investors, the question is how can one use this knowledge to make a profit. Fund managers think merger arbitrage […]

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Low Volatility ETFs: Same Returns with Less Worry

December 9, 2012

If 2012 was the year of the dividend ETF, 2013 may be the year of the low volatility ETF.  The dividend play may be a bit skewed going into 2013 due to so many special dividends (here are a few special dividend announcements) being paid prior to year-end and a possible exodus from dividend payers […]

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ETF Spotlight: PureFunds ISE Mining Service ETF (MSXX)

December 2, 2012

FactorShares, a company better known for exotic funds tracking the spreads between dissimilar asset classes (gold and stocks, for example), has launched a new fund tracking the mining service space. The new fund offers a new way to get exposure to a popular asset class – gold and silver bullion – by investing in companies […]

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Jeep Heroes Program – And Veterans Special Offer [Sponsored Video]

November 27, 2012

Whenever I see a Jeep on the road, I hearken back to some of my old favorite war movies.  As the video below outlines, Jeep vehicles were leading our troops into battle all the way back to World War 2 and has been a mainstay of military equipment ever since. Here’s an interesting factoid for […]

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Utility ETFs Offer Intriguing Opportunity

November 25, 2012

Utility companies are back in the headlines as investors reconsider their preference for dividend-paying equities with uncertain tax policy coming in 2012. Key utility sector indexes are off more than 6% in the last month while forward yields look compelling for conservative investors. Tax Concerns are Overblown Investors traditionally value utilities on a dividend discount […]

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Bank ETFs Rocket in 2012 but The Rally Isn’t Over

November 18, 2012

Investors in banking stocks made out like bandits in 2012 despite worries of a European meltdown, slowly-improving housing market, new regulations, and falling net interest margin. For all the worries about the financial system, banking profits seem as though they are in a consistent recovery. Why Bank ETFs Make Sense The banking system generates revenue […]

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With Hurricane Sandy as Context, Is Your Company Protected?

November 16, 2012

It often takes a crisis to spur action for a business or personal preventative expenditure, but then shortly after the crisis has passed, it’s immediately back to the status quo.  Think about how many people on the East Coast lost power for days on end just over the past couple years with the various major […]

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The Case for Small and Mid Cap Stocks in 2013

November 11, 2012

As the dust settles from the presidential election, investors are regrouping to find how to invest for the next four years. A number of trends look good for the small and midcap corners of the investment universe. Here’s what should drive small and midcap stocks in 2013 and beyond: Record bond issuance – As we’ve […]

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Timing the Market with the Put-Call Ratio

November 4, 2012

The put-call ratio is one of my favorite sentiment indicators. As investors know, it often pays to be a contrarian. The most famed contrarian investor, Warren Buffett, says it best – investors should be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy. The put-call ratio gives investors the ability to see into […]

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Spin-Off ETF Continues Index Beating Performance

October 28, 2012

Special events are some of the best sources for high returns. This year and throughout its history, the Claymore/Beacon Spin-Off ETF (CSD) is proving that it can deliver stellar investment returns by following an events-driven strategy. ETFBase first profiled CSD in 2009. The fund tracks a proprietary index from Beacon indexes. The index ranks spin-offs […]

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Musings on the Election Outcome and Investment Returns

October 25, 2012

There’s a lot of different information and opinions flying around related to the upcoming presidential election, so I thought I’d add my 2 cents.  There are a few things worth watching, but in the end, frankly I don’t intend on making any theme-related investments leading into the election (or shortly thereafter).  I usually keep my […]

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View ALL Your Financials in One Spot with Personal Capital’s Free Service

October 23, 2012

Personal Capital is a one-stop shop for aggregating all your financial information in one spot in an automated fashion.  The beauty of the system is that once you connect all your financial institutions from banks to IRA, 401(k) accounts and more, your Personal Capital dashboard will aggregate everything in various views and can be customized […]

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Is the Turkey ETF a Great Emerging Market, or Just the Best of Europe?

October 21, 2012

Turkish stocks are some of the best-performing investments all around the globe. Helped by a rising Turkish Lira, falling dollar, and resilient economy, the MSCI Turkey Investable Market Index Fund (TUR) is up more than 47% percent year to date. Investing in Turkey Turkey is a unique foreign market classified as an emerging market by […]

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Will Germany take Greece to the slaughterhouse?

October 21, 2012

There has been plenty of talk about Greece leaving the Eurozone in the last two years, yet the beleaguered nation continues to hang on for its life. This may be about to change. Anders Borg, Sweden’s finance minister, was last weekend quoted as saying Greece may have to leave the Euro within six months. This […]

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Barclays Launches ETN Based on Shiller CAPE

October 14, 2012

Barclays launched a new fund to lure fans of Robert Shiller’s Cyclically Adjusted Price Earnings Ratio (CAPE Ratio), a valuation methodology that is catching on with investors. Robert Shiller’s original CAPE ratio sought to find the best times to buy or sell stocks as a whole asset class based on their share price relative to […]

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Can’t Find a Favorite Mortgage REIT? Own the Industry with this ETF

October 7, 2012

A little known REIT ETF has outperformed the market, and provided a whopping 11% yield along the way. iShares’ FTSE NAREIT Mortgage REITs Index (REM) excels in delivering the highest yields with broad exposure to the market for real estate investment trusts. The fund makes for an interesting exchange-traded fund in that it has one […]

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Capitalize on Bond Market Inefficiency with These ETFs

September 30, 2012

The rise of the exchange-traded fund has forever changed the financial markets. With the click of a button, investors can now buy and sell hundreds of holdings with a single instrument. Long-term investors can buy established index portfolios for only a few basis points per year in expenses. And ETFs have significantly improved liquidity in […]

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Gold Miner ETFs vs. Gold: Finding a Fair Ratio

September 23, 2012

Given the recent Fed action and immediate market rally in certain QE3 favored assets, it should come as no surprise that old is back en vogue.  The relationship between gold prices and gold miners should be quite clear – gold miners, which are levered to gold prices, should advance in excess of any move in […]

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Quantitative Easing Propels ETF Explosion

September 16, 2012

Investors interpreted Bernanke’s plan to buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities per month as a call to “buy everything.” This much is clear from last week’s best performing exchange-traded funds. Top 5 ETFs Last Week VelocityShares 3X Long Natural Gas ETN (UGAZ) 31.3% – Natural gas was this week’s winner. Natural gas logged several up […]

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Ramping Up Yields with the SuperDividend ETF

September 9, 2012

What do you get when you mix international equities with a high-yield advantage? You get a super dividend ETF – the Global X SuperDividend ETF (SDIV). Thrown into one of the hottest markets for dividends in decades, the SuperDividend ETF is making waves with investors who are after global high-yield exposure. The fund boasts an […]

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Palladium ETF Shares Strong Link to Automakers, Worst of Metals in 2012

September 3, 2012

When ETFSecurities launched its ETFS Physical Palladium Fund (PALL), it set the ETF scene on fire. Even regulators worried that the ETF may corner the market for physical palladium, one of the most rare of the industrial metals. So far this year, Palladium has failed to keep pace with other well known metal funds. Here’s […]

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Musings on Interest Rates

September 3, 2012

Since the Fed has projected that the Fed Funds rate will be virtually zero for another few years, investors may assume investments tied to interest rates will be range-bound during this period but nothing could be further from the truth.  For instance, with no major policy changes or announcements, we’ve seen the 10-Year Treasury yield […]

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Sponsored Video: New Zealand as a Destination

August 29, 2012

This post is sponsored by Tourism New Zealand: Ever been to New Zealand?  We haven’t made it there yet, but is certainly on the list once our kids are either old enough to travel or out of the nest.  Home more than just film sets of the Lord of the Rings franchise and multiple other […]

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Raise the ROOF with this Outperforming REIT ETF

August 26, 2012

Real estate investment trusts come in all shapes and sizes. Mortgage REITs give investors high-yield exposure. Retail REITs reward investors with exposure to consumption – 70% of the American GDP. And storage REITs give investors exposure to the business of storing all things that Americans buy. So what’s the appropriate balance? Well, it depends on […]

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Water ETFs Hold Everything…Except Water

August 20, 2012

Like life insurance to a newly-wedded couple, water ETFs are supposedly the best investment in the world. Water is a scarce resource – some 780 million people go without clean water every day of the week.  Not a day goes by that we don’t read about water-borne illnesses in the developing world, drought conditions in […]

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Best ETFs for a Romney-Ryan Republican Victory in 2012

August 12, 2012

Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan for vice president will influence more than public policy. The next leader of the free world will have a huge impact on Wall Street. What’s at Stake The politics may be about jobs, but the bigger issues only affect a few key sectors and asset classes. Here are two focal […]

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New Sector Rotation ETF Launches with Market Beating Management

August 5, 2012

Sector rotation became popular years ago as investors realized that whole sectors were “hot or not” together, moving in sync as if there were no distinguishable differences between stocks in the same industry. Fast forward several years and sector rotation funds are finally catching on. Bancshares recently launched the Huntington US Equity Rotation Strategy ETF […]

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Technology ETFs for Value Investors

July 29, 2012

What’s wrong with tech stocks? With the exception of notable and attention-grabbing companies like Facebook (FB), Zynga (ZNGA) and others in the Social Media ETF space, the technology sector is very reasonably valued. Technology companies currently have the lowest PEG ratio among the 10 sectors in the S&P 500 index, this according to analysts at […]

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New “Death Cross” Tactical ETF Chases Alpha and Beta

July 15, 2012

AdvisorShares just launched a new fund it calls the AdvisorShares Global Alpha & Beta ETF (RRGR). An actively-managed fund, AdvisorShares will run the portfolio with a goal to beat a benchmark comprised of a weighting of stocks and bonds. The fund will compete with a benchmark similar to a 60-40 mix of the S&P 500 […]

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Can Dividend Dogs Beat the Street?

July 8, 2012

Dividends make up the bulk of stock market returns, but can you find great stocks just by finding great dividends? Some seem to think so – and the historical performance makes a fairly convincing argument. Dogs of the Dow Smashes the S&P 500 In every period in the past 20 years, the Dogs of the […]

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Covered Call ETFs: Do the Returns Justify the Fees?

June 24, 2012

As volatility pushes higher and expected future returns decline, investors are turning to income strategies to generate better long-run returns. Covered calls are one such way to boost returns and reduce volatility. Covered Call ETFs There are only two American covered call ETFs: CBOE S&P 500 BuyWrite Index ETN (BWV) – The BuyWrite ETN tracks […]

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Equal Weighted ETFs to Counteract the Apple Effect

April 9, 2012

Every alternative has its costs. Exchange-traded funds make investing less expensive, arguably less thoughtful, and certainly much less profitable for the investment management industry. From the perspective of an individual investor, these are all very good things. We often miss what the popularity of indexing tends to hide. Separating the Index from the Investment BusinessInsider […]

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OptionsHouse Review

February 12, 2012

I had the pleasure of using OptionsHouse as a broker for well over a year. As a light volume options trader and investor, I found their products and services to be some of the best. Heavy option traders would benefit even more from an OptionsHouse account. OptionsHouse Commissions and Fees Where OptionsHouse stands out from […]

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Shorting Treasury Options: Profit, Rinse, Repeat

December 6, 2011

Every few months, I’ve been repeating the same pattern of shorting out of the money leveraged ETFs on US Treasuries and keeping the premiums when the options expire.  It’s been a nice way to supplement largely flat market returns with recurring income, and in my view, without taking on an inordinate amount of risk.  Since […]

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Are Kelley Blue Book Values Accurate and Reliable?

May 24, 2020

If you’re looking to sell your vehicle, you need to know the exact value. But you can’t go and knock on every car dealer’s door to ask how much your vehicle is worth. The Kelley Blue Book is a solution to this problem. Every car has a different value according to its model, build, and […]

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Four professional tips to trade the cryptocurrencies

February 28, 2020

Trading cryptocurrencies has become hugely popular in the retail trading community. In the past, people used to think that trading the Forex pairs and commodities market is the only way to earn money in trading. But things have changed a lot over recent years. Many reputed companies like bigX are offering cryptocurrencies as trading options. […]

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Identify the trend to trade like a pro trader

February 22, 2020

In the Forex market, there are many analyzing tools, if you are new you will get confused by the different tools. To trade in the Forex market profitably, you need to know and understand each of the tools and how do they work. So, what are the key things that you need to analyze to […]

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Four steps to improve your trade execution

February 22, 2020

There are many things you need to learn to earn money at trading. The naive traders are always trying their best to push themselves to the next stage. They are so biased with the leverage trading account that often forgets trading is all about finding high-quality trades with low risk. You need to follow the […]

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Is Self-Employment Right for You?

January 7, 2020

These days, if you’re sick of the nine-to-five routine, and answering to a boss every day, then you can always consider taking a different route. You don’t necessarily need to go through the stress of launching your own company to have more freedom. Instead, you can consider going self-employed, and becoming a sole trader in […]

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Courage is the key to become a successful trader

August 29, 2019

It is necessary for traders to manage a good performance. We are actually talking about the currency trading business of Forex. And the personal of our interest is the novice traders. There will have to be some good performance in the business. All of the traders will have to care for some good performance in […]

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Stop making common mistakes in trading

April 16, 2019

There will have to be some good thinking in order to maintain retail trading. This is because the volatility of the marketplace, it is not so possible for the traders to manage some good performance. All of the right performance in the business will have to be with good control. Not all traders know about […]

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It is alright to trade small and being safe

April 16, 2019

The right business in Forex will be there with some proper control. However, most traders make mistakes through making a poor choice of trade setups. Then think about making money is the one and only target which can make some good performance happening. But their targets get some wrong choices to work with. There remains […]

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How an IVA is managed

November 26, 2018

If you’re entering into (or even thinking about) an IVA (Individual Voluntary Arrangement), then it’s important to understand how it’s managed and what you can expect from it. An IVA is a legally binding agreement and a form of insolvency.  Once you’ve entered into it then you’ll be bound by its terms and failure to […]

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