ETFs - How They Help Build Wealth

The idea of pooling investment assets has been around for centuries. Mutual Funds first appeared in the 1920s. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that mutual funds became widely popular with mainstream investors.

In recent years, ETFs have taken off as an alternative to mutual funds.

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a “basket” of stocks, bonds, or other financial instruments that gives convenient exposure to a diverse range of assets. ETFs are an incredibly versatile tool that can track anything from a particular index, sector, or region to an individual commodity, a specific investment strategy, currencies, interest rates, volatility, or even another fund.

You can do about anything with them — hold a diversified portfolio, hedge, focus on a particular sector, or even profit in a bear market.

The most significant practical difference between mutual funds and ETFs is that ETFs can be bought and sold like individual stocks — and mutual funds cannot. Mutual funds can only be exchanged after the market closes and their Net Asset Value (NAV) is calculated. Shares of ETFs can be traded throughout regular market hours, like shares of stock.

Both mutual funds and ETFs have expense fees that can range from low to high. Mutual funds can have front or backend loads or redemption fees in addition to management fees.

ETFs that trade like shares have commissions to buy and sell. But some ETFs are so popular that brokers offer commission-free trading in them.

So Many Choices

The sheer number and variety of ETFs can be a bit mind-boggling. Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen just a couple hundred ETF offerings grow to more than 8,000 worldwide, encompassing more than 10 trillion in assets.

A surprising number of ETFs have failed. They started with an interesting focus (well, “interesting” to somebody) but failed to attract enough interest to remain viable. For this very reason, I avoid narrow niche ETFs that trade with low volume.

I eliminate many ETFs on poor liquidity alone. I’m not interested if there’s not much volume in a product. I don’t want to suffer high slippage from wide bid/ask spreads. I want to get in and out quickly and at fair prices. Continue reading "ETFs - How They Help Build Wealth"

ETFs That Track Retail Investing Trends

Over the past few years, retail investors have shown they have the power (money) to take stock prices to 'the moon' if they operate as a group.

Last year it was GameStop (GME) and AMC (AMC).

Just a few weeks ago, it was AMTD Digital Inc (HKD), which was IPO'd in July and has had a trading range of $13.52 per share up to $2,555.30 per share since the initial public offer. HKD is currently trading in the low $200 range.

But just because retail investors can do something, does that mean they should? Are the retail crowd good stock pickers? And should you follow their lead?

At this time, we don't know the answer to these questions. That is because we don't have enough data on whether or not retail investors operating as a whole are good stock pickers. They have only really been flexing their muscle for a little more than a year.

Plus, when they started with GME and AMC, we were still in a bull market. But now, we are in a bear market. So it would be unfair to say the retail investor's recent performance shows their lack of sophistication and that they don't belong picking stocks.

A few Exchange Traded Funds track what retail investors are talking about on social media or buying in their brokerage accounts, and as of late, retail investor stock picks are not outperforming the market.

The VanEck Social Sentiment ETF (BUZZ), which tracks the top 75 companies with the most popular sentiment online based on a proprietary AI model to select stocks, is down 32% year-to-date.

The SoFi Social 50 ETF (SFYF), which tracks the 50 most widely held stocks in self-directed brokerage accounts of Sofi Securities, is down 25.55% year-to-date.

And the FOMO ETF (FOMO), which invests in the areas of the market that are currently in favor with retail and individual investors or currently 'trending,' is down 17.94% year-to-date. Continue reading "ETFs That Track Retail Investing Trends"

New Overnight Exposure ETFs

It's no secret that big moves happen during "extended" trading hours. These extended hours are those that come before and after the markets' standard hours.

During these hours, 4:00am until the market opens at 9:30am Eastern and after then again when regular trading ends at 4:00pm until 8:00pm Eastern, company earnings are reported, merger and acquisition news is posted, and a slew of other big newsworthy events trickle out to investors. Newer retail traders may not know about these ‘extended’ trading hours, but those who follow the markets closely understand the importance of this time.

These extra hours of trading are so important because, during the morning session, it more or less sets the tone for the overall trading day.

In the pre-market hours, we received a few earnings reports that make stocks move in one direction or another. But more importantly during the morning session, investors receive a lot of the economic data that will dictate what is occurring in the economy and thus cause the market to move one way or the other.

During the after-hours trading period, from 4:00pm until 8:00pm Eastern, investors are hit with more company-specific news, such as the bulk of earnings reports, conference calls, company-specific ‘material’ or special information, and mergers and acquisitions.

These more company-specific news events cause individual stocks to make massive moves either higher or lower, but typically won't effect the overall markets the same as the economic data and reports that are released pre-market.

And then, of course, we also have the none stock market or economic data news, such as bombings, terrorist attacks, weather events, etc. These news stories are unpredictable but can push and pull the prices of individual stocks or the broader market. Even those that occur during non-regular trading hours, and perhaps don’t directly relate to businesses that trade on the market could still have an overall effect on the price of stocks (both positively or negatively).

How can we take advantage of these pre and postmarket moves?. The fund managers of two new exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the NightShares 500 ETF (NSPY) and the NightShares 2000 ETF (NIWM) believe they have a strategy to leverage these times of volatility. The back-tested theory behind these ETFs has found that by owning stocks during the non-regular trading period and then selling them during regular trading times, you would have performed better than the overall market.

Just this year, for example, the S&P 500 is down 18%, but during the non-regular trading hours, it's only down 10%. The Russell 2000 has a similar story, down 21% during regular trading hours and only 7% if you where just invested overnight according to AlphaTrAI.

The NSPY is a fund that will track the S&P 500 while the NIWM will track the Russell 2000. Both funds are intended to be held for just one day at a time, since they will be using futures, options, and derivatives to gain exposure to the markets. Furthermore, each fund will offer investors 1X exposure to their corresponding index during regular trading hours and 1.5X exposure during the overnight period. These exposure percentages are before fees and expenses.

Due to the methods being used to gain exposure and the fees and expenses, these products are not intended to be held for long periods of time and will lose value due to contango and other factors at play. Therefore, NSPY and NIWM are not necessarily intended for long-term buy-and-hold investors, although they can be. These ETFs will primarily be used to hedge against risk or purchased daily by traders whom want broad exposure to the overnight market.

Both funds went live the last week of June 2022, so performance data is not yet known. However, we do know that each fund has an expense ratio of 0.55%, which is much higher than index-tracking ETFs, but about in line with a niche fund offering very special exposure.

There are not currently any ‘overnight short’ ETFs available to investors, likely because Alphatrai Funds, the issuer of both NSPY and NIWN, believes the overnight market is more bullish. But, if you are insistent on being short overnight, you could always short these ETFs and buy put options contracts, if and when options become available for these funds.

If you are invested long term in stocks, you already have ‘overnight’ exposure, since you are not likely buying at the open and selling at the close each and every day. However, even for long term investors, having a way to ‘hedge’ risk when the market is not open each evening, or maybe even more importantly during the weekend, is always nice and may help you sleep better, especially during times when the market is abnormally turbulent.

Matt Thalman
INO.com Contributor
Follow me on Twitter @mthalman5513

Disclosure: This contributor did not hold a position in any investment mentioned above at the time this blog post was published. This article is the opinion of the contributor themselves. The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. This contributor is not receiving compensation (other than from INO.com) for their opinion.

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How To Profit From The Amazon-Whole Foods Deal Before It Happens

Matt Thalman - INO.com Contributor - ETFs


The announcement that Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) had made an offer to purchase Whole Foods Market Inc. (NASDAQ:WFM) sent the grocery stocks plummeting. While some experts think Amazon's move into the grocery business is a great idea, others aren’t so sold on the idea.

Regardless of whether this move by Amazon is good or bad for Amazon, the grocery sector was punished by this news and I don’t think stocks like The Kroger Co. (NYSE:KR) deserved to fall nearly 10% on the news. Or even Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT), Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT), Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST) all losing billions in market capitalization just because Amazon is buying Whole Foods.

Really? Continue reading "How To Profit From The Amazon-Whole Foods Deal Before It Happens"