1. Moving The Markets
It was a lively day in the stock market today with equities making a major rebound from the disappointing performance so far this week. In fact, the major indexes nearly regained all of the losses since the start of the week. Until today, the markets were subdued by emerging market turbulence alongside the fact that the Fed announced it would further reduce its bond-buying stimulus by $10 bil. Investor sentiment changed today though as new economic data emerged that showed solid U.S. growth in the fourth quarter of 2013. European stocks also rebounded today in accordance with the strong data on U.S. growth.
Facebook (FB) shares jumped 14% today, hitting an all-time high after they announced a big jump in revenue from mobile advertising. This seemed to have a bullish effect on mobile-ad revenue oriented companies as Twitter (TWTR) gained 7% and LinkedIn (LKND) gained 4%. Other notable gainers in the tech world included Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG).
The rally for equities today had a negative impact on gold as the Direxion Daily Gold Miners Bull 3X Shrs (NUGT) closed 6.6% lower. This is not surprising in that we have seen equities and gold trading in opposite directions for the better part of the year. In addition, the dollar strengthened today which also fueled the decline in gold prices.
Our 10 ETFs in the Spotlight shifted into high gear and followed the major indexes higher with one of them now moving back into the green YTD.
2. ETFs in the Spotlight
In case you missed the announcement and description of this section, you can read it here again.
It features 10 broadly diversified ETFs from my HighVolume list as posted every Monday. Furthermore, they are screened for the lowest MaxDD% number meaning they have been showing better resistance to temporary sell offs than all others over the past year.
In other words, none of them ever triggered their 7.5% sell stop level during this time period, which included a variety of severe market pullbacks but no move into outright bear market territory.
Here are the 10 candidates:
While XLP was a great performer early last year, it clearly has lost its luster and upward momentum. I took its modest rebound today to liquidate our current positions and will look for better opportunities.
Year to date, here’s how the above candidates have fared so far:
3. Domestic Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs)
Our Trend Tracking Indexes (TTIs) reversed their recents slide and closed higher:
Domestic TTI: +2.58% (last close +1.98%)
International TTI: +3.93% (last close +3.80%)
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