On September 10, Barclays Global Investors debuted the first ETF to track the U.S. municipal bond market, which will provide investors a different way to invest in municipal issues as reported by Bloomberg. My preference for investors with after-tax money wishing to generate income has always been the use of closed end muni funds, the benefits which have been detailed …
Sunday Musings: Getting The Upper Hand
The problems and tremendous cash needs of Countrywide (as a stockholder you might prefer the name “Countryslide”) made me reflect on my recent dealings with them and how a company that size could get themselves in such a predicament. The $2 billion cash infusion by Bank of America seems to be gone and it appears that Countrywide is on the …
From The ETF Archives: Beware Of Low Volume ETFs
Since ETFs trade like stocks, large Bid-Ask trading spreads can eat into your potential profits. As a general rule, this does not appear to be a problem with ETFs that are heavily traded. To demonstrate, at the time of this writing, I checked out the spreads for 2 ETFs that I don’t have any positions in at the moment. Let’s …
No Load Fund/ETF Tracker updated through 9/13/2007
My latest No Load Fund/ETF Tracker has been posted at:http://www.successful-investment.com/newsletter-archive.phpThe bulls had the upper hand and the major indexes ended up in positive territory. Our Trend Tracking Index (TTI) for domestic funds/ETFs moved higher to +4.03% above its long-term trend line (red) as the chart below shows: The international index also remained +0.84% above its own trend line, keeping us …
No Load Fund/ETF Investing: When Do Bull Markets Die?
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 …