MarketWatch recently featured Jim Stack, editor of the Investech newsletter as saying that “Bull Markets don’t die of old age, they die from deterioration and economic imbalances, and we are seeing economic imbalances now.” That’s been my experience as well, and I agree with his assessment. While he did not predict a speedy end to the bull—election-year politics may help …
Trend Tracking: ETFs or No Load Mutual Funds?
In my advisor practice, my mode of operation is to use both, ETFs and No Load Mutual Funds depending on what I’m trying to accomplish. Generally speaking, I prefer ETFs when investing in more volatile areas such as sectors and countries. This eliminates the problem of possibly increasing costs by having to deal with early redemption fees. Of course, my …
Special No Load Fund/ETF Tracker Update For 9/10/2007
Continued volatility had the bulls and bears in a tug-of-war all day. Rallies, as well as pullbacks could not be sustained and we ended up essentially unchanged. I believe that this kind of uncertainty will stay with us into next week when the Federal Reserve meets to decide if any changes in interest rates are warranted. Our Trend Tracking Indexes …
No Load Fund/ETF Investing: An Argument For The Bulls?
Mark Hulbert of MarketWatch wrote a piece about a technical indicator that I had never heard of. In regards to the recent low volume days he says that there is one aspect that might actually quite bullish: On three of the past trading sessions, stock market volume triggered a bullish technical signal known as a “Nine To One Up Day.”Here’s …
Sunday Musings: Was The Last Bear Market A ‘Black Swan’ Event?
Very slowly, I have been trying to digest Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book “The Black Swan.” It’s an incredible piece of work about the impact of the highly improbable. Nassim explains that an improbable event has 3 characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and …
ETF Investing: Adding Muscle To Your Portfolio
Even though ETFs represent “only” indexes for just about every conceivable investment orientation does not mean that they don’t have any muscle to propel your portfolio higher. A quick look at my dbase containing over 1,200 no load funds and some 500 ETFs shows that the 2 top performers (based on my M-Index ranking) are ETFs, namely FXI and PGJ. …