Sunday, November 24, 2024
There have been periods in the past during which investing in bonds was interesting. Some of the best books about Wall Street were written about bond desks in the ‘80s. These days though, the fixed income world is plagued by ultra-low rates. Much of the investment world has turned its attention to equities and other […]
One of the more intriguing current trends in U.S. investing is the growing number of strategic ETFs that have become available to investors. Index investors have typically used ETFs like SPY to capture the action of the broader market. However strategic ETFs represent or emulate an entire trading strategy, rather than just tracking an index […]
Casual investors will be aware of what happens in the stock market, but may not be as well informed about the current state of interest rates. Retirement plan experts recommend allocating a large portion of 401(k) accounts to bonds, and those building for retirement using their company 401(k) plans may not be aware of how […]
2020 has been a wild ride for investors in energy infrastructure stocks. A range of factors, including energy demand destruction due to COVID-19, a meltdown of the high-yield investment sectors, and a perception that new, renewable energy technologies, will quickly replace oil and gas usage. Energy infrastructure, sometimes called energy midstream, are the services that […]
In March and April, the pandemic-triggered stock market crash hit the high-yield investment sectors, especially hard. Exchange-traded funds and notes (ETFs, ETNs) lost up to 90% of their value in a very short time. UBS to Redeem Two Leveraged Mortgage ETNs After 95% Plunge “Leveraged” is the word to note. Before the COVID crisis, there […]
The stock market crash at the start of the so-called “coronacrisis,” was especially devastating to share prices in high yield sectors. I attribute the extra steep declines to what I have labeled a “liquidity event,” in which leveraged funds using the high yield investments were forced to sell, sell, sell, to avoid becoming leveraged into […]
The S&P 500, and its ETF analogue SPY, is roughly breakeven for the year, which is crazy if you think about it. We had a full market crash in March due to the coronavirus pandemic. For the most part, the concerns that arose in March haven’t come close to being resolved; yet the stock market […]
If you are an income-focused investor, you likely feel that your investments have been left behind. The financial news covers the hot stocks such as Amazon and Tesla, which seem to set new record highs every day. Outside of the handful of top tech stocks, most investments have not recovered from the February and March […]
Trying to understand the stock market in the middle of a pandemic is a challenge for even the most seasoned of traders. It’s not like the investing world has much to compare to. Sure, the Spanish Flu seems roughly like a similar situation—but that was more than 100 years ago. The markets are far larger […]
Over the last two decades, the investment landscape has been dramatically altered by two trends. The first is the shift from single stock and mutual fund investing into exchange-traded products (primarily ETFs). The second is the emergence of volatility as an asset class. First off, ETFs opened the door for the average investor to trade […]
