Nasdaq AMZN Amazon

OVHcloud on Thursday said it would reap the full benefits of price hikes only in 2024, after the French cloud services provider's third-quarter sales came in a touch above forecasts.

Led by a resurgent tech sector, growth stocks are back in a big way in 2023, and the popular Vanguard Growth ETF ( NYSEARCA:VUG) is up 31.7% year-to-date. So, what is VUG, and could it be a fit for your portfolio?  What Does the VUG ETF Do? VUG is the growth ETF from the fund and ETF giant Vanguard, and it's a popular one, growing to almost $90 billion in assets under management (AUM) since its inception in 2004. In fact, VUG is the 11th-largest ETF in the world by AUM, and if you remove two bond funds from the equation, it comes in at number nine. The ETF seeks to track the results of the CRSP US Large Cap Growth Index.   VUG's Portfolio VUG is fairly diversified, with 241 holdings, although note that its top 10 holdings account for over 50% of assets. In fact, the top two holdings, Apple ( NASDAQ:AAPL ) and Microsoft ( NASDAQ:MSFT ), combine to account for over 25% of the fund. Below, you can get an overview of VUG’s top holdings using TipRanks’ holdings tool. As a growth ETF, VUG’s top holdings are dominated by the large-cap tech stocks that have propelled the market higher this year, including the aforementioned Apple and Microsoft, plus Amazon ( NASDAQ:AMZN ), Nvidia ( NASDAQ:NVDA ), Alphabet ( NASDAQ:GOOGL ) ( NASDAQ:GOOG ) and Tesla ( NASDAQ:TSLA ).  However, VUG isn’t limited to mega-cap tech. Beyond these names, healthcare giant Eli Lilly ( NYSE:LLY ) and payment networks Visa ( NYSE:V ) and Mastercard ( NASDAQ:MA ) also occupy spots within the top 10. Other notable holdings include more blue chip, large-cap growth stocks like Meta Platforms ( NASDAQ:META ), Thermo Fisher Scientific ( NYSE:TMO ), Home Depot ( NYSE:HD ), Costco ( NASDAQ:COST ), and McDonald's ( NYSE:MCD ). VUG’s top 10 holdings feature a solid collection of Smart Scores. The Smart Score is a proprietary quantitative stock scoring system created by TipRanks. It gives stocks a score from 1 to 10 based on eight market key factors. A Smart Score of 8 or higher is equivalent to an Outperform rating. As you can see in the table above, six out of VUG’s top 10 holdings feature Smart Scores of 8 or better. VUG itself features an impressive ETF Smart Score of 8. Is VUG Stock a Buy, According to Analysts? Turning to Wall Street, VUG has a Moderate Buy consensus rating, as 66.9% of analyst ratings are Buys, 29.7% are Holds, and 3.4% are Sells. At $298.07, the average VUG stock price target implies 6.9% upside potential. A Star Performer VUG is up 31.7% year-to-date, as mentioned earlier, and 24% over the past year, but it has been providing strong returns for its investors for a lot longer than that. Over the past three years, VUG has returned 11.8% on an annualized basis. Over the past five years, VUG has provided even better total returns of 13.2% on an annualized basis. Zooming all the way out to 10 years, VUG has returned a stellar 13.9% on an annualized basis. Going all the way back to its inception in 2004, VUG’s total annualized return is impressively still in the double digits at 10.2%. Double-digit annualized returns over a long-term time horizon like this are a great way to build long-term wealth.  Furthermore, VUG is one of the rare ETFs that can say it has "beaten the market" over an extended time frame. Let’s use its Vanguard counterpart, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF ( NYSEARCA:VOO) , as a stand-in for the broader market and the S&P 500 specifically. Over a three-year time horizon, VOO’s annualized total return of 12.8% beats VUG’s 11.8%. However, when the time frame is extended to five years, VUG has the edge with a 13.2% return to VOO’s 11% return. Going out 10 years, VUG’s 13.9% annualized return also beats VOO’s 11.9% return. Below, you can check out a comparison of VUG and VOO created using TipRanks' ETF Comparison Tool, which allows investors to compare up to 20 ETFs at a time across a variety of customizable factors. VOO’s long-term double-digit annualized returns are stellar, so this sets a high bar for beating the market, but VUG is an ETF that can make this claim.  Minimal Fees Despite this excellent long-term track record, VUG isn’t charging investors an arm and a leg for this performance. The ETF’s expense ratio of just 0.04% is very investor-friendly. This means that an investor putting $10,000 into VUG would pay just a negligible $4 in fees in year one of investing in the fund. After three years, this same investor would pay just $10 in fees, and after 10 years, their total in fees paid would be just $39. You can essentially gain exposure to hundreds of the market's top growth stocks for 10 years for less than the price of a dinner for two at most restaurants nowadays, which is a good deal in my book. Minimal fees like this can help investors to preserve the principal of their investment portfolios and make a big difference over the long term, as high fees can really add up over time. Investor Takeaway Note that VUG is also a dividend payer. While its current dividend yield of just 0.6% isn't much to write home about in and of itself, it all adds up to help add to total returns over time. Furthermore, VUG has a proud history as a dividend payer, having made dividend payments to its holders for 18 years in a row going back to its inception in 2004. With a very attractive expense ratio, a strong portfolio, and an excellent long-term track record, VUG is the type of ETF that investors can feel confident about making a cornerstone of their portfolios for the long term. Since VUG is up considerably this year, it's likely that there will be pullbacks at some point. Still, this ETF has proven itself as a long-term winner, so investors can consider utilizing these pullbacks to dollar-cost average into a position over time to lower their cost basis. Disclosure

Twitter's new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, is working on a slew of measures to bring back advertisers who left the platform under Elon Musk's ownership, including introducing a video ads service, pursuing more celebrities and raising headcount, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Wednesday.

Fintel reports that on June 28, 2023, Needham maintained coverage of Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) with a Buy recommendation. Analyst Price Forecast Suggests 6.32% Upside

British online supermarket Ocado Retail has followed rivals by cutting prices of some essential items, adding to hopes a surge in food inflation will moderate this year and provide relief to consumers battered by a cost of living crisis.

In a bid to bolster its presence in the self-driving space, Amazon AMZN is expanding its Zoox operations.Zoox’s headcount increased by 16% to 2,200 from 1,900 at the beginning of this year.Zoox has been testing its driverless robo

The U.S. retail industry plays an important role in the functioning of the economy. Robust consumer spending and rapid expansion of e-commerce have fueled the upward trajectory of the sector in recent months, showcasing steady gro

Many experienced investors know that it’s hard to beat the market over time. When they say this, they mean that it’s difficult to pick stocks and ETFs that can sustainably outperform broader market indices like the S&P 500 ( SPX ) on a long-term basis.  This is with good reason -- the S&P 500 sets a high bar with an annualized total return of just over 10% going all the way back to 1957 when it took on its current incarnation with 500 components.   Let’s take a look at one popular ETF, the Schwab U.S. Large-Cap Growth ETF ( NYSEARCA:SCHG) ,  and see if it’s worthy of a spot in investors' portfolios by being one of the rare ETFs that beats the odds and can help investors outperform the market over time.  What Does SCHG ETF Do? SCHG is a growth-oriented ETF from Charles Schwab ( NYSE:SCHW ) that has about $18.7 billion in assets under management. According to Schwab, the ETF seeks to replicate the performance of “the total return of the Dow Jones U.S. Large-Cap Growth Total Stock Market Index” before fees and expenses.   Blue-Chip Holdings Because it invests in an index composed of large-cap U.S. growth stocks, most investors will likely be familiar with SCHG’s top holdings, which skew largely towards the mega-cap growth stocks that lead today’s stock market. Below, you’ll find a list of SCHG’s top 10 holdings using TipRanks’ holdings tool. Apple ( NASDAQ:AAPL ) is SCHG's largest holding with a 14.1% weighting, followed closely by Microsoft ( NASDAQ:MSFT ), which has a 12.6% weighting. Amazon ( NASDAQ:AMZN ), Nvidia ( NASDAQ:NVDA ), and Alphabet ( NASDAQ:GOOGL ) round out the top five. However, it’s not all tech stocks, as UnitedHealth Group ( NYSE:UNH ) and Visa ( NYSE:V ) take the final two spots in SCHG's top 10.    SCHG is diversified in that it owns many stocks, with 243 total holdings. However, its top 10 holdings account for 55.5% of the fund, making the ETF a bit top-heavy, especially when considering that Microsoft and Apple combine to account for over a quarter of SCHG’s total assets.  This is a strong group of holdings, as five of the 10 feature Smart Scores of 8 out of 10 or better. The Smart Score is TipRanks’ proprietary quantitative stock scoring system. It gives stocks a score from 1 to 10 based on eight market key factors. The score is data-driven and does not involve any human intervention. A Smart Score of 8 or above is equivalent to an Outperform rating. SCHG itself has an outperform-equivalent ETF Smart Score of 8. Is SCHG Stock a Buy, According to Analysts? Turning to Wall Street, SCHG has a Moderate Buy consensus rating, as 68.04% of analyst ratings are Buys, 28.42% are Holds, and 3.54% are Sells. At $78.98, the average SCHG stock price target implies 7.4% upside potential. Impressive Track Record Ultimately, you want to evaluate how any investment has performed over the long term, and SCHG does not disappoint in this regard. As of the end of May, the growth-oriented ETF posted a scorching three-year annualized total return of 18.5%. Zooming out to a five-year time frame, SCHG cooled down a bit from that red-hot rate but still posted an impressive five-year annualized return of 13.5%. Going out even further, over the past 10 years, SCHG upped this return to 14.4% on an annualized basis. Going all the way back to its inception in 2009, SCHG has returned 14.2% on an annualized basis.  As you can see, SCHG has posted double-digit returns on an annualized basis for more than 10 years, making this ETF a long-term winner. It’s hard to find fault with these types of results, and these are the types of long-term returns that can help investors to grow their portfolios significantly over time. These total returns also mean that SCHG is a rare ETF that can say it beats the broader market over time. As of the end of May, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF ( NYSEARCA:VOO) , a good proxy for the S&P 500, had annualized total returns of 12.8%, 11%, and 11.9% on a three-, five- and 10-year basis, respectively, meaning that SCHG beat the S&P 500 over all three time frames.  Alternatively, because it features large-cap growth and tech stocks so heavily, it is also worth comparing SCHG to a Nasdaq ETF like the Invesco QQQ Trust ( NASDAQ:QQQ) , which invests in the Nasdaq 100 Index ( NDX ). SCHG handily beat QQQ over the three year timespan, with the aforementioned 18.5% annualized return versus QQQ’s 15%. However, going out to five years, QQQ’s 16.2% return beats SCHG’s 13.5%. Going all the way out to 10 years, QQQ also outperformed SCHG with an 18% return to SCHG’s 14.4%. As you can see, SCHG has been better than QQQ in recent years, but QQQ has the edge when expanding the time frame out to five and 10 years. However, at the end of the day, these both look like great ETFs.  Below, you can take a look at a comparison of SCHG, VOO, and QQQ using TipRanks’ ETF Comparison Tool, which lets investors compare up to 20 ETFs at a time across a wide variety of criteria. Hard to Beat These Fees In addition to proving its mettle as a strong performer over time, SCHG is also attractive because of its low fees. With an expense ratio of just 0.04%, an investor putting $10,000 into SCHG would pay just $4 in fees in year one -- less than a cup of coffee at many places nowadays. Assuming SCHG gains 5% a year going forward and the current fees stay the same, an SCHG investor would pay just $51 in fees over the course of the decade, making this a cost-effective ETF that helps investors to preserve and grow the principal of their investment over time.   For the sake of comparison, QQQ's 0.2% expense ratio is actually a very reasonable one, but using the same parameters, after 10 years, an investor would pay $255 in fees, or about five times as much as they would pay with SCHG. Investor Takeaway It's hard to beat the S&P 500 over the long term, so when you find an ETF that does, you want to pay attention. With a long history of beating the broader market, high-quality blue-chip holdings, and investor-friendly fees, SCHG looks like a solid building block for investors to make a core piece of their long-term portfolios.  Disclosure

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq edged higher on Wednesday as gains in tech giants Apple and Microsoft offset worries over the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate hikes slowing the U.S. economy.

A U.S. judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Amazon.com Inc AMZN.Obrought by the parents of two teenagers who committed suicide by consuming sodium nitrite they bought on the online retailer's platform.

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Payments and interest on federal student loans were suspended early in the COVID-19 pandemic, providing financial relief to millions of borrowers. That suspension was extended eight times, but the end is finally near. Starting in October, borrowers must resume making payments.

Bull vs. Bear is a weekly feature where the VettaFi writers’ room takes opposite sides for a debate on controversial stocks, strategies, or market ideas — with plenty of discussion of ETF ideas to play either angle. For this edition of Bull vs. Bear, James Comtois and Nick Peters-Golden discussed the case for and against [...] Read more at ETFtrends.com.

Ocado shares fell by as much as 11% on Wednesday, with traders attributing the drop to a media report that said Amazon had denied reports it would make a bid for the British retail company.

Below is Validea's guru fundamental report for AMAZON.COM, INC. (AMZN). Of the 22 guru strategies we follow, AMZN rates highest using our P/B Growth Investor model based on the published strategy of Partha Mohanram. This growth model looks for low book-to-market stocks that exhi

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Businesses and Big Tech on Wednesday criticised European Union data rules agreed between EU countries and lawmakers, saying they could hinder data flow and contractual freedom, while a pan-European consumer group said they did little for Europeans.

A smart beta exchange traded fund, the Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight Consumer Discretionary ETF (RSPD) debuted on 11/01/2006, and offers broad exposure to the Consumer Discretionary ETFs category of the market.