Finance

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

Many gold bulls are frustrated that during last year’s U.S. dollar decline, the precious metal didn’t rally more strongly. After all, the U.S. dollar had a terrible 2017. One might assume that this would have been an ideal environment for gold. I have even heard the argument that since gold couldn’t rally more strongly during…

Worried About FANGs? Consider This Hot Tech ETF

Audio length: 00:15:56 In this episode of ETF Spotlight, I talked with Steven Schoenfeld, founder and CIO at BlueStar Indexes. Steven is an expert in Israeli stock market. We discussed Israel’s booming tech sector and the BlueStar Israel Technology ETF (ITEQ – Free Report) that focuses on Israeli tech companies. Israel has more than 90 companies listed…

Tale Of The Tape: Bitcoin Vs. Gold

Bitcoin is hard to describe, so we often use analogies. “Digital gold” is the most popular way to summarize bitcoin’s purpose. Today we take a deep dive into this analogy to see how gold and bitcoin stack up. Let’s start with size. Bitcoin: $163 billion market cap (price per coin multiplied by the number of…

Q1 Earnings Drag Pharma ETFs Down

Total earnings for 83.1% of the total healthcare market capitalization are up 14.7% on revenue growth of 8.1%. The growth rates seem unimpressive when compared with some of the other sectors. Earnings and revenue beat ratios of 88.9% and 75%, respectively, are also not great either. Among the most notable players, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ – Free Report) was…

Will The SPX Break Out Ahead Of The JCPOA Recertification Deadlin

Perhaps we’ll have a clearer picture of direction on the S&P 500 Index (SPX) on a break one way or the other after President Trump decides by May 12 whether or not to recertify the JCPOA. At the moment, it’s trading within a tight range between 2620 and 2680, as shown on the daily chart below. The momentum (MOM) indicator is in downtrend and trading below the zero level. The relative…

The Big Four Economic Indicators: April Nonfarm Employment

Official recession calls are the responsibility of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is understandably vague about the specific indicators on which they base their decisions. This committee statement is about as close as they get to identifying their method. There is, however, a general belief that there are four big indicators that the committee weighs…

FANGs: More Lives Than A Cat

Can a group of stocks be any more resilient than the FANG type stocks? It seems like any time the stocks in this group have their backs against the ropes, they come bouncing back.It happened again this week when what was looking like a pretty poor week for the group quickly turned around. Adding even…

Pre-May US/World Corn Update

Lower US & S. American outputs can tighten both old & new crop stocks Market Analysis Corn’s main focus has switched to the US planting season after the March 29 planting intentions survey. This report’s larger-than-expected 2.14 million acre drop in US seedings and April’s near record average cold temperatures across the eastern 2/3rds of…