A New Corporate Bond ETF (CBND)

Ulli Bond ETFs Contact

With interest rates hovering around the zero line, ETF providers are scrambling to bring additional products on the market to satisfy the income needs of the investing public, as reported by Barron’s:

Funky niche ETFs might be annoying to some. But State Street’s (STT) Global Advisors group today brought to market a fund which could actually clean out much of the clutter in a rather expansive ETF marketplace.

Enter the SPDR Barclays Capital Issuer Scored Corporate Bond ETF (CBND). Instead of picking and ranking its components by who’s the biggest (which, in this environment can be akin to who’s in the worst shape), CBND selects its issues based on fundamentals. Those include metrics such as  return on assets, interest coverage and measures related to a company’s ability to fund  short-term obligations.

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ETFs On The Cutline—Updated through 4/8/2011

Ulli ETFs on the Cutline Contact

In this second edition, you’ll notice that ETFs do not remain in the same position in relation to the cutline for very long. This week’s exception would be DFJ, which continues to hang around the +1 placement.

Then there are fast paced ETFs like TUR, which was in a +3 position last week and catapulted off this table by having moved +4.55% above its long term trend line.

Others, like RWX, moved down from +20 to +13.

Take a look at this week’s table:

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Sunday Musings: Update On New Blog Improvements

Ulli ETF Tracker Contact

Last Monday’s premier post titled “ETFs On The Cutline” was a successful one based on positive reader feedback along with a high count of blog visitors.

As I announced a couple of weeks ago, further improvements, to provide you with more relevant ETF/mutual fund data, were in the pipeline, are now finalized and will be published next week. If you are on the mailing list, a notice will be emailed to you.

Here’s what’s coming your way:

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On ETFs, CEFs, MLPs And Trend Tracking—One Reader’s Experience

Ulli Reader feedback, Trend Tracking Contact

You just never know what all you can do with the concept of trend tracking until someone else tells you about it. That was the case with reader KD, who more or less customized trend tracking to match his risk tolerance and investing preferences.

Here’s what he had to say:

I thought I would share some of my results since we first communicated. In March 2009 I had a net worth of about $3.9 M of which $0.5 M was house, leaving $3.4 M investable. In March 2011, I have $4.9 M investable.

With your help, I avoided the 2008 fiasco and then jumped in with both feet in the 2-3 qtr 2009. I like to balance my portfolio with income producing instruments, but don’t care for typical bonds. In the 4 qtr 2009 I bought about $1.3 M CEF munis, paying 5-7% tax free,  and sold them in November 2010 for a substantial capital gain and then invested about $1.5 M in oil & gas pipeline MLP’s, which pay 5.5% to 7.5% and are now worth about $1.7 M. I use cefconnect.com to help select the CEF’s and tickerspy.com to help me select the MLP’s.

The balance of my portfolio is in ETF’s.  My account is with Etrade and I use only limit orders. Cost is $10 per execution. Note I follow your trend tracking index and will go to 100% cash if the market turns against me.

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ETF/No Load Fund Tracker updated through 4/7/2011

Ulli ETF Tracker Contact

ETF/No Load Fund Tracker StatSheet

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THE LINK TO OUR CURRENT ETF/MUTUAL FUND STATSHEET IS:

https://theetfbully.com/2011/04/weekly-statsheet-for-the-etfno-load-fund-tracker%E2%80%94-updated-through-472011/

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Market Commentary

Friday, April 8, 2011

MAJOR MARKET ETFs LACKING A PULSE

This week turned out to be a non-event, as far as the direction of the major market ETFs was concerned, as the last five trading days ended with the S&P 500 losing a whopping -0.03%.

The action was definitely to be found in the energy, precious metals and commodities’ sectors, as prices in ETFs representing these areas rocketed higher.

Gold surged to over $1,470 for the first time, while silver breached the $40 level for the first time in some 31 years. Not to be outdone, crude oil headed to within striking distance of $113/barrel. As a result, the Transportation ETF (IYT) took a turn south. If you follow historical events, you might want to keep an eye on IYT, as it lead the markets lower before the crash in 2008.

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Weekly StatSheet For The ETF/No Load Fund Tracker— Updated Through 4/7/2011

Ulli ETF StatSheet Contact

ETF/Mutual Fund Data updated through  Thursday, April 7, 2011

If you are not familiar with some of the terminology used, please see the Glossary of Terms.

 

1. DOMESTIC EQUITY MUTUAL FUNDS/ETFs: BUY— since 6/3/2009

As announced via a blog post, on 6/2/2009, the TTI triggered a buy signal with an effective date of 6/3/2009. We will use the 7% trailing stop loss of our positions as an exit point or the crossing of the trend line to the downside, whichever occurs first.

As of today, our Trend Tracking Index (TTI—green line in above chart) has broken above its long term trend line (red) by +4.82%.

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