Alternative ETFs

Play This ETF for Great Rotation Into Food and Drink Stocks

August 4, 2013

The great rotation was anything but great. Data reflects only modest differences in fund flow data, but where the funds are flowing, there’s serious concentration. The PowerShares Dynamic Food & Beverage ETF (PBJ) suggests that investors who want a lower risk profile are turning to consumer staples equities. The fund tracks 30 different food and […]

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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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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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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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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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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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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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