Saturday, November 23, 2024
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 […]
Making directional trades in this market isn’t easy. On the one hand, you have high flying stocks that are trading well above reasonable valuations. Trading those types of stocks can be dangerous since they can reverse on a dime. On the other hand, value stocks are dead. Stocks trading below reasonable valuations just seem to […]
The market finally saw some active selling last week, with volatility climbing quite a bit higher. The iPath VIX Short-term Futures ETN (VXX) is one of the most popular ways to trade volatility. It covers the first two VIX futures contracts and tends to go up sharply when the market sells off. As you may […]
Despite plenty of volatility in the market, it hasn’t been any easier to generate income for your portfolio. Yields are still ultra-low for most fixed income instruments. Moreover, many high-yield dividend stocks have slashed their dividend payments. Regarding dividend stocks, buying and holding them is certainly not an unreasonable way to generate yield. The best […]
The market is experiencing a resurgence of volatility, adding to the already very active options market. Last week, the bears finally caught up to Facebook (FB). The social media platform’s share price dropped 8% in one day, with options trading over 1 million contracts. The selloff came courtesy of Verizon (VZ), which decided to pull […]
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 […]
The stock market’s daily movement has begun to normalize, at least compared to March. The major stock indexes are moving about 2% per day on average, significantly higher than what we’ve become used to. Keep in mind: it’s far more typical to see daily moves of 1% or less. Of course, a market crash will […]
Options trading continues to be very active in this market, even though daily volatility of stocks moves has dropped in recent weeks. Index and ETF options remain popular methods for trading market direction. They are also very useful instruments for hedging long stock portfolios. For instance, iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) can be used as […]
Although the market has been extremely volatile, it doesn’t mean investors are only looking at directional trades in which they try to make money on big market moves. There are plenty who are still want to generate a regular income from their investments. Of course, dividend stocks are the primary form of income generation through […]
