Seeking Alpha featured a story titled “REITs Pop While Commodities Flop,” showed a summarized table showing various assets class returns of various time periods. Let’s take a look: While commodities were the hot item for most of this year, the trend has clearly reversed as the sharp 1-monht drop of DJP shows. REITs, as represented by VNQ, have shown a …
Investing In Financials
Based on reader email, I know that there are many investors out there itching to try to pick a bottom in the severely beaten up financial sector. It’s beyond my understanding why the desire to gamble is so prevalent in that area. The Big Picture had some enlightening comments on the subject. Here are some excerpts: Just when you think …
Sunday Musings: Stating The Obvious
MarketWatch featured and article titled “Choose fund managers who stay ahead of the curve,” in which the editor of the No-Load Fund Investor newsletter (Mark Salzinger) states that you should avoid managers who believe “the market is wrong and they are right.” Here’s a snippet: In a radio interview, Salzinger defined that type of manager as one who is unwilling …
Bucking The Trend
One way to evaluate if an ETF or mutual fund still has long-term upward momentum is to look at the %M/A column in my weekly StatSheet, which simply shows if a fund is above or below its trend line and by what percentage. Many once hot sectors like energy and commodities, along with most country funds, have dropped severely and …
No Load Fund/ETF Tracker updated through 7/31/2008
My latest No Load Fund/ETF Tracker has been posted at:http://www.successful-investment.com/newsletter-archive.phpAnother wild ride of the major indexes accomplished nothing but excitement. Our Trend Tracking Index (TTI) for domestic funds/ETFs remains below its trend line (red) by -2.61% thereby confirming the current bear market trend. The international index now remains -9.06% below its own trend line, keeping us on the sidelines. For …
Getting To Know Ratchets
You’ve probably been wondering how capital impaired firms such as Merrill Lynch, WaMu, Citigroup and others can continue to scour the globe in need of fresh capital to shore up their deteriorating balance sheets. The key to attracting new money is a so called “ratchet provision,” which reduces the risk for the party investing the funds. Mish at Global Economic …