Tag: ETF Investing Strategy

Worst Performing ETFs Of 2018

Posted on by Matt Thalman

After a down year like 2018 most investors want to just forget about what happened. But those investors who focus on understanding why their investments went south are the ones who will learn from their mistakes and hopefully avoid making them in the future. The start of a new year is a good time to review your investing thesis and try to pinpoint why some investments didn’t turn out the way you imagined they would.

With the S&P 500 (SPX) ending the year down 6.24%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) losing 5.63%, and the NASDAQ (COMP) dropping 3.88% in 2018, more than a handful of Exchange Traded Funds not only underperformed the major averages, but a few of them could have cost you nearly everything.

Let’s take a look at the top five worst performing ETFs of 2018 in a number of different categories the average investor had to choose from ion 2018 to see if you owned one or more of them.

The following table shows the performance of the worst five ETFs in 2018, as well as their performance over the last month, the last three months, the last five and ten years.

Worst Performing ETFs 2018

The following table shows the performance of the worst five Non-Leveraged ETFs in 2018, as well as their performance over the last month, the last three months, the last five and ten years. Continue reading "Worst Performing ETFs Of 2018" →

Top Performing ETFs Of 2018

Posted on by Matt Thalman

2018 was a wild year as we saw the markets rise to new all-time highs in the first half of the year only to crash during the last quarter of the year causing the major indexes to all close in the red for the year, for the first time in over a decade. But despite the S&P 500 (SPX) ending the year down 6.24%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) losing 5.63%, and the NASDAQ (COMP) dropping 3.88% in 2018, more than a handful of Exchange Traded Funds not only performed better than the major averages, but a lot of them put up some very impressive returns.

Let’s take a look at the top five best performing ETFs of 2018 in some different categories the average investor has to choose from.

The following table shows the performance of the top five best performing ETFs in 2018, as well as their performance over the last month, the last three months, the last five and ten years.

Top Performing ETFs 2018

The following table shows the performance of the top five Non-Leveraged ETFs in 2018, as well as their performance over the last month, the last three months, the last five and ten years. Continue reading "Top Performing ETFs Of 2018" →

3 Reasons Why You Should Still Avoid MJ, The Marijuana ETF

Posted on by Matt Thalman

2018 was a tough year for long-term buy and hold marijuana investors. As a whole, the industry went on quite a wild roller-coaster ride. Marijuana stocks popped in December 2017 as anticipation for the ‘legalization’ of the drug occurred in the state of California on January 1st, 2018. We saw stock prices and the ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF (MJ) jump as investors anticipated a ‘boom’ for the industry.

But, within a month or so of the legalization date, most of the marijuana-related stocks have fallen in price and MJ was trading below its December 2017 price. A few months went by, and most of the industries stocks just meandered along. Then the next big ‘legalization’ date grew near, October 17th, 2018, the day marijuana became legal in Canada.

The price of most of the well known and many of the lesser-known marijuana stocks, and MJ of course, once again began to ski-rocket. MJ, for example, went from $24 per share in August 2018, to as high as $45 per share, with its peak occurring just days before October 17.

Each time a new State or large country legalizes the drug, the companies in the industry experience an unfound increase in their valuation as investors buy shares at an insanely high rate. This type irrational buying leading up to a hyped up, essentially arbitrary date has put a lot of investors in a really bad place in 2018. MJ for one is down more than 24% in 2018, while other individual marijuana companies have seen their stock prices fall even further. Continue reading "3 Reasons Why You Should Still Avoid MJ, The Marijuana ETF" →

GE's Recent Dividend Cut Highlights The Problem With Dividend Investing

Posted on by Matt Thalman

General Electric (GE) has been paying a dividend to shareholders for 119 consecutive years. But if you look at the history of GE’s dividend, it regularly has been cut. Most recently, just at the end of October, the company lowered its $0.12 per share quarterly dividend down to $0.01 per share quarterly dividend. It should also be noted that its dividend was only at $0.12 per share after the company cut it from $0.24 per share per quarter in November of 2017.

GE’s move to slash its dividend down to the mere bone is just another reminder of the massive downside risks associated with investing in dividend-paying stocks. You see because when GE cut its dividend from $0.24 per share per quarter down to $0.12 per share per quarter, the stock dropped more than 7% from where it was the previous day. The same decline occurred this past October when the dividend was cut from $0.12 down to $0.01; the stock fell 8.7%. Furthermore, since the day prior to the announcement of the first dividend cut, GE stock is down an astonishing 63%.

But just because GE cut its dividend and its stock price has fallen off a cliff doesn’t necessarily mean all dividend-paying stocks are extremely risky. Or more so, that there is no way to lessen the risk associated with dividend-paying stocks. Continue reading "GE's Recent Dividend Cut Highlights The Problem With Dividend Investing" →

REIT ETFs May Be Better Than Equity ETFs

Posted on by Matt Thalman

A report issued last year called the “Historical Returns of the Market Portfolio,” looked at the performance of worldwide financial assets for the modern era, from 1960 to 2015. The researchers Laurens Swinkels of Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Trevin Lam of Rabobank, and Ronald Doeswijk, found that during the observed time frame global stocks returned 5.45% a year, non-government bonds returned 3.5% a year, and government bonds returned 3.06% a year. But, shockingly the best assets class from 1960 until 2015 was actually real-estate investment companies and trusts, which produced a yearly return of 6.43%.

The difference of a Real-Estate Investment Trust portfolio and a global equity portfolio for a period of 20 years would mean the REIT portfolio would have beaten the global stock portfolio by nearly 30%. Furthermore, the REITs performed very well when looked at on a per decade basis. The 1990s was the only decade in which REITs didn’t perform, as returns were just above zero. But that decade following the 1980s when things were booming. This all while stocks performed poorly in the 1970s, which just barely producing positive returns, and from 2000 until 2010 when global stock returns were actually negative.

In addition to performing better than stocks on a per-decade basis, real-estate’s worst year was never as bad as stocks worst year but its best year was better than global stocks best year. More so, it had fewer years in which it fell more than 10% than the number of years in which stocks fell 10% or more. Continue reading "REIT ETFs May Be Better Than Equity ETFs" →