Despite the Nikkei rally on Wednesday, the domestic markets did not participate at all as the chart above shows (courtesy of marketwatch.com). Broadly diversified international ETFs, like VEU, fell further (-2.68%) then the domestic market as represented by SPY (-1.86%). It was nervous time as the news from Japan in regards to their nuclear power plants continued to be spotty …
Nikkei Loses 16% in 2 Days—Domestic Losses More Modest
Uncertainty surrounding the Japan natural disasters, and unknown consequences from the affected nuclear facilities, pushed the Japanese Nikkei down by over 1,000 points in early trading yesterday. The domestic indexes followed the path down but to a lesser degree and staged a nice recovery as the chart above shows. The market reaction was based on only scant news reports but …
Bouncing Off The Lows
Yesterday started out to be a difficult day in all of the global markets as the Nikkei sank some 6% in the aftermath of Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami. The domestic major indexes pulled back right after the opening as well, but the drop was contained in terms of magnitude. Mid-day buying kept the damage limited with the S&P; 500 …
Gimmick of the Week: A Smartphone ETF
With smartphones being all the rage, an ETF consisting of the major players in this business was recently brought to the market. FONE started trading some 3 weeks ago as MarketWatch reports: “The index includes companies primarily involved in the building, design and distribution of the handsets, hardware, software and mobile networks associated with the development, sale and usage of …
Sunday Musings: Who Will Buy Treasuries When The Fed Doesn’t?
Bill Gross wrote and interesting piece in InvestmentNews titled “Who will buy Treasuries when the Fed doesn’t?” Let’s look at some highlights: Speaking of investment tips, no clue or outright signal could have been any clearer than the one given in December 2008, labeled “Quantitative Easing.” While the term was new, the intent was obvious: (1) pump public money into …
What Do You Do When An ETF Folds?
Out of the 1,000 or so ETFs that are currently available, I feature about half of them in my weekly StatSheet via the Master ETF list. The other half is too new and not yet worthy of tracking, since I like to see about 9 months of price data in order to be able to evaluate their trends. Out of …