By Michael Orzano, Senior Director, Global Equity Indices, S&P Dow Jones Indices For a U.S. investor, developed market exposure outside of the U.S. is a core building block in forming a comprehensive global portfolio. In part because of its status as the world’s first international equity index, MSCI EAFE enjoys a commanding market presence for international [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
By Jim Wiederhold, Associate Director, Commodities and Real Assets, S&P Dow Jones Indices Only a few months ago, it seemed that global soybean supplies were more than ample, and in the case of the U.S., a semi-permanent soybean mountain had been built in the wake of damaged demand from its top customer, China. Fast forward to late [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
By Cristopher Anguiano, Analyst, Global Research & Design, S&P Dow Jones Indices The search for strategies that identify risks and growth opportunities with a motivation in sustainable investing has never been higher for emerging markets. Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing provides a way for investors to go above and beyond traditional financial considerations by focusing on [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
By Liqian Ren, Director of Modern Alpha, WisdomTree If Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell gave a speech on U.S. economics during the same week that President Trump gave a speech on the labor market, you would expect that Powell’s speech would be parsed and analyzed more closely by investors. So, I was a little bit surprised that the Central [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
By John Patrick Lee, CFA, Product Manager, VanEck Who could have predicted that a free game would make more money than any other video game in a single year? That’s exactly what Fortnite did in 2018, when it brought in about $2.4B. It is a prominent example of how in-game spending has revolutionized the video game [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
By Brandon Rakszawski, Senior ETF Product Manager, VanEck As the markets work through the turmoil that has accompanied this U.S. election season, I’m reminded of a research paper published this spring by Andrew Lane of Morningstar. The paper looked at the Morningstar® Wide Moat Focus IndexSM (the “Index”) and its excess returns relative to the broad equity markets following months with [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
By Frank Holmes, CEO, U.S. Global Investors Want to hear something really scary? Inflation, the scourge of the modern economy, may be running much faster than we’re led to believe. I’ll use consumer spending on Halloween as an example of what I mean. Total Halloween spending has fallen for the past three years and was projected [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
By Stephen McBride Lester Knispel bought the $1.5 million white-columned house on the second fairway. His Porsche is now parked in the garage. And family pictures hang in the living room. But Lester and his wife have never set foot inside their new country club home! They live in California, and didn’t want to visit [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
By Justin Spittler We’re also smack dab in the middle of earnings season. This is when companies tell the world how their business is doing. They reveal how much their sales grew and if they turned a profit. Good quarterly results, as I’m sure you know, can cause a stock to race higher. Bad earnings, [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
The gold price spent the first part of election week trading close to $1,900 per ounce but spiked to around the $1,950 level mid-week. Speaking to the Investing News Network, Frank Holmes, CEO and CIO at U.S. Global Investors, said the price move from the yellow metal didn’t surprise him. In fact, he expects gold [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
Stocks and index ETFs closed the week slightly lower on Friday, following a robust initial election response and weekly run-up in stocks that occurred despite of a still undecided presidential election and a surging number of coronavirus infections. Analysts predict that stocks may be more tepid in the week ahead however, as investors continue to [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
It’s no secret – 2020 has been a rollercoaster of emotions, both in the market and out of it. Forward-thinking financial advisors have adopted quantitative investment strategies to combat emotional pitfalls of asset allocation. In the upcoming webcast, A Practitioner’s Guide to Quantitative Investing During Uncertain Times, Chris Shuba, Founder, Helios Quantitative Research; Joe Mallen, [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
The social aspect of corporate culture reflects how a firm treats its employees and can also add value and enhance a company. “State Street Global Advisors believes that the single most important driver of long-term value is a strong, independent and effective board exercising high-quality oversight. In turn, we have long appreciated the positive correlation [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
BlackRock iShares’ recently launched Kuwait exchange traded fund can help investors take a targeted approach to an emerging Middle East economy. The iShares MSCI Kuwait ETF (CBOE: KWT), which was launched on September 1, tries to reflect the performance of the MSCI All Kuwait Select Size Liquidity Capped Index. KWT comes with a 0.74% expense [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.
Exchange traded fund investors may be missing out on an opportunity in the small- and mid-cap international equity market segment. “While US investors recognize the potential growth and diversification benefits US SMIDs offer – with 13.3% of their portfolios in them – they seem to have overlooked international SMIDs. According to Morningstar, they have just [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.