ETF Showdown

Emerging markets ETFs have come roaring back with a vengeance in recent weeks and we're getting close to the time on the calendar when in 2010 many of these funds started to make significant moves to the upside. Of course, only time will tell if we see a sequel to that trend, but it is clear that...

For all the attention that oil gets in the mainstream media and for all the gushing (no pun intended) analysts and pundits do about oil equities and ETFs, there are still names in this universe that are still fairly anonymous. To be fair, that may be a symptom of numbers. There are hundreds of...

This isn't going to be one of those times when we ask the lame question "Market volatility got you down?" because, and let's be honest here, unless you own one of those fancy algorithm trading systems where the computer does all the work, market volatility can be a pain in the neck. For equity...

The hunt for yield has been a prevalent theme for several years, particularly in the wake of so much dividend cutting during the financial crisis. Financials were the unfortunate ring-leaders of the dividend-cutting regime and while they have started to climb back into the dividend game, but even...

Since the series debuted in 1962, 22 "official" James Bond movies have been produced. Did you know that three of the titles mention gold? Of those three, "Goldfinger" is probably still the most-well known and that film, the third in the 007 series, is still widely regarded as one of the best in the...

Let's be honest: Few investors think that what materials and mining companies do is a "sexy" business. They don't make smartphones, tablets or operate in the high-growth e-commerce or social networking spheres. Yep, all that is true, but materials stocks, on the other hand, are sexy. High beta...

It has been a long time since the Industrial Revolution, a period of history that is most often discussed in high school history classes. Industrial stocks just aren't sexy in an era of iPads, search engines and streaming movies. Nor are industrials the flavor of the day when investors are...

Dividends, as you may be aware, are back in style. Not that they should have ever been out of style. It has been documented hundreds of times, if not more, that dividend stocks outperform the broader market over time. So having a couple of dividend payers in your portfolio is a wise idea. The...

These are go-go days for commodities. Shortages or rumors about crimped supplies for corn, cotton and plenty of others have led to price spikes of unprecedented proportions. It's probably a good thing that there isn't an active water futures market, at least not yet, because perhaps the world's...

Earlier today, Vanguard, the third-largest U.S. ETF issuer, announced a series of expense reductions for six of its ETFs, a move that escalates an already flourishing price war between ETF issuers that sponsor ETFs that hard to tell apart except for when you look at the fees. Vanguard's previous...

The world of biotech. So much profit potential, so much potential for peril at the hands of the FDA and so many takeover targets for big pharma. Indeed this is a sector that is rarely full of dull moments. A prime example of this being Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE: SNY) and its drawn-out tryst with Genzyme...