The trend remains your friend if financials have been overweighted in your portfolio. Measured by one-year performance, this sector is red hot in absolute and relative terms, based on a set of proxy ETFs. Tech is a close second for one-year sector returns. Goldman Sachs forecasts that the pair will hold on to their leadership positions in the near term. “Growth will drive technology share prices higher while change in growth will support the performance of financials,” David Kostin, a strategist at the bank, wrote last week. “We expect both sectors will outperform going forward, but for different reasons. The tech sector will benefit ...
AstraZeneca (AZN) announced progression-free survival results for the Phase III MYSTIC trial, a randomized, open-label, multi-center, global trial of Imfinzi monotherapy or Imfinzi in combination with tremelimumab versus platinum-based standard-of-care chemotherapy in previously-untreated patients with metastatic1st-line non-small cell lung cancer. The combination of Imfinzi and tremelimumab did not meet the primary endpoint of improving PFS compared to SoC in patients whose tumors express PD-L1 on 25% or more of their cancer cells. As a secondary endpoint, although not formally tested, Imfinzi monotherapy would not have met a pre-specified t...
As a portfolio manager, I start each morning by consuming copious amounts of a heavily caffeinated beverage and a data feed from a litany of web and blog sites. Over the last few days, as asset prices have set new records, there have been numerous articles on whether the market is currently in a bubble. Here are a few I grabbed from a Google search: Where’s The Next Bubble Forming In The Markets? How The ETF Bubble Feeds The Stock Market Bubble Market Entering A Bubble Zone U.S. Stock Market: Is The Bubble About To Burst Well, you get the idea. First, like a “watched pot never boils,” bubbles occur when no one is looking for them. B...
The levitation continues with S&P futures pointing to – what else – another higher open while European stocks swung between gains and losses on the busiest earnings days of the year (85 of the Stoxx 600 report) which has seen European pharma giant AstraZeneca plunge 15%, the most on record, after its flagship lung cancer trial Mystic failed to show benefits, while Deutsche Bank slumped 4% on a 12% plunge in FICC revenue. Asian shares rose spurred by results and alongside a surge in China’s small-cap ChiNext index which surged 3.6%, its biggest one day gain since last August, after earnings reports revealed that the Chi...
The price of copper has gone up strongly in recent days and weeks. The fact that many have noticed this, and that financial media are becoming ultra-bullish, is a sign of caution. Let’s take a look at the copper’s chart and do a sentiment analysis to conclude whether copper is bullish or bearish going forward. Copper price bullish or bearish? First, mainstream media has associated the price of copper as being bullish just because it hit 2-year highs. We would say there is no correlation whatsoever between both. A bullish or bearish outcome is the result of, first and foremost, long term trends on (very) long term price charts, followe...
Asian markets were broadly higher on Thursday morning, following Wall Street and responding notably to the Federal Reserve’s announcement on Wednesday after their two-day policy meeting. As expected, the Fed kept interest rates stable and gave hints to its upcoming policy regarding inflation, saying it expects to start winding down its holdings of bonds “relatively soon,” giving analysts an expectation of a September launch for the program.This fiscal tightening could actually reduce the need for further rate hikes in the near future. MSCI’s broadest index of shares outside Japan rose 0.5 percent in early trade to levels not reached s...
As equity market implied volatility grinds lower it’s worth throwing a couple more charts into the mix. In this post we look at ETF bets on the VIX and cross-asset volatility. ETF market bets on the VIX are hanging on despite the headwinds that such products face, it goes to show there are still holdouts despite the continued grind-down in implied volatility. And it’s not just equity market volatility that’s compressing, our measure of implied volatility across asset classes is also falling. It’s almost a certainty that volatility will rise, it’s really just an issue of timing. The ETF products that go into the...
Gold prices surged in the wake of an FOMC announcement that the markets interpreted as dovish. The US Dollar fell alongside Treasury bond yields after the policy statement crossed the wires, boosting the relative appeal of non-interest-bearing and anti-fiat assets. Looking ahead, a lull in top-tier news flow may see momentum slow until second-quarter US GDP figures enter the picture Friday. S&P 500 futures are pointing cautiously higher, so a bit of a corrective pullback may be in the cards if interest rates edge up a bit in risk-on trade. Crude oil prices marked time, unmoved as EIA inventory data showed a larger-than-expected dr...
Hess Corporation (HES – Free Report) is an integrated energy company engaged in oil and gas Exploration & Production (“E&P”) and refining as well as marketing. The company’s E&P activities are concentrated in Algeria, Australia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Denmark, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Indonesia, Libya, Malaysia, Norway, Russia, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Currently, Hess Corporation has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) but that could change following its second quarter 2017 earnings report which has just released. We have highlighted some of the key details from the just-released announceme...
As a product of the last several years, ETFs’ promise of liquidity has yet to be tested in a major bear market, particularly in less-liquid fields like high yield bonds. That’s from Howard Marks and it echoes something he’s been saying for years. Namely that an ETF promises intraday liquidity even as in many cases the assets underlying the ETFs are not in fact liquid. As Marks put it back in 2015: The ETF can’t be more liquid than the underlying, and we know the underlying can become highly illiquid. That is the very foundation of my criticism with regard to HY and EM bond ETFs. It is philosophically impossible for something to be mor...