Comfortably Numb
The U.S. stock market is struggling to hold on to gains accrued since early March. Upward momentum seems to have stalled at resistance around the February highs. The drop on Monday looked like it might be the beginning of something worse, but there has been no follow-through yet. The stubborn short-term…
Equity ETFs with Smallest Bounce
Here is a list of the 10 equity ETFs with the smallest retracements (as of April 21, 2009) of their declines of the past year. Yesterday I posted the 10 equity ETFs with the largest bounce, which prompted inquires as to what the other end of that ranking looked like. To make today’s list, I used…
Equity ETFs with Biggest Bounce
Here is a list of the top-10 equity ETFs with the largest percentage bounce back (as of April 21, 2009) from their low point of the past year. To make the list, I first created the following filters: Long-only equity ETFs and ETNs (bond, currency, commodity, asset allocation, and inverse ETFs are not…
Kiplinger Joins Frugalpalooza Tour
As the recession in the U.S. started to deepen last year, we developed an investment theme we dubbed Frugalpalooza. The concept is based on our belief that Americans will turn against frivolous spending and begin to scrimp and save. Some companies will benefit from this return to frugality; others…
ETFs with Surge in Traded Value
Here is a list of the top-10 ETFs that experienced the largest percentage increase in value traded for the week ending April 17, 2009. To create the list, I first screened for ETFs and ETNs that had an Average Daily Value Traded (ADVT) of at least $1 million for the past 21 market days. This includes…
Not Much New at Fidelity Funds
This article is the third in a series about mutual funds. I previously covered Rydex Funds and Direxion Funds. Once upon a time, there was a company that was a true pioneer in the mutual fund business. Their global approach to growth investing (from bygone decades) with the likes of the Magellan…
New Alternative Strategy Funds from Direxion
Direxion is best known for providing tools that help investors and traders implement their strategies. Their line of 3x ETFs, providing +300% and -300% exposure to many popular indexes, have been quite successful for the company. Recently, Direxion took another big step with their new alternative…
Reverse Share Splits and Other Rydex Fund News
With all the talk about ETFs, you might think that traditional open-end mutual funds no longer existed. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, most of the innovation is now taking place in the ETF space, but mutual funds will be with us for a long time. In my All Star Fund Trader publication,…
ETF Liquidity Tiers – April 2009
The overall look and feel of this month’s liquidity tier table is much like the one from last month. If plotted it would have the general appearance of a bell curve. There are a total of nine tiers, with each one representing an order of magnitude improvement in the Average Daily Value Traded…
ETF Billion Dollar Club – April 2009
The month of March saw slightly more than $2 trillion worth of ETFs and ETNs change hands. That equates to nearly $91 billion per day of what is called the Average Daily Value Traded (ADVT). Although we could divide that number by the quantity of ETFs to determine how much the average ETF traded,…