Technology Select Sector SPDR (XLK)

All Comments on XLK

  • commenter
    The World's
    Worst
    Stockpicker
    Oct 06 01:05 PM
    My Website
    How Do Commodities ETFs Compare to ETNs? [view article]
    The article is very informative. Thanks. Reply
  • commenter
    ETF STER
    Oct 06 12:18 PM
    How Do Commodities ETFs Compare to ETNs? [view article]
    You had my attention until you decided to turn this into an internet advertisement of your newsletter.

    I think that Seeking Alpha should send you a bill.     Reply
  • commenter
    gamma65
    Oct 05 01:18 AM
    My Website
    What To Do in a Rebuilding Year [view article]
    The equity and bond markets have benefited from a long period of low inflation, but ongoing and massive central bank liquidity injections point to a far less benign environment of elevated inflation ahead. Research by our firm, Agcapita Farmland Investment Partnership (Calgary, Canada based agriculture private equity firm – farmlandinvestmentpart...) shows investors must be prepared to rotate into asset classes with different characteristics. During the last commodity bull market & high inflation period in the 1970’s, equities materially underperformed farmland.
    - Western Canadian farmland went from around $100/acre to $550/acre (550% total return and 176% in inflation adjusted terms);
    - Cash held in a money market account barely kept ahead of inflation (6% inflation adjusted return); and the
    - S&P 500 index returned less than 2% per year (a loss of almost 50% in inflation in adjusted terms)

    We believe the world is still in the early stages of this current commodity bull market. When agriculture commodities prices are compared against their previous inflation adjusted highs they are significantly discounted implying scope for further increases:
    - Corn is US$ 5/bushel currently compared to US$16/bushel in 1974,
    - Wheat is US$ 7/bushel currently compared to US$27/bushel in 1974
    - Canadian farmland is C$ 660/acre currently compared to C$1,100/acre in 1981

    Another interesting metric is the long-term average ratio of the Commodities Research Bureau Index versus the S&P 500 which is currently around 1.5 times. Simplistically, this ratio indicates how much S&P 500 stock you can buy with a fixed basket of commodities. Some important points:
    • During the commodity bull market of the 1970s, the ratio was consistently higher than 2 times for over 10 years – it peaked at almost 4 times.
    • The ratio is currently at around 0.5 times - significantly below the 1.5 times long-term average, just slightly above the 0.15 all time low reached in 1999/2000 and still very far below the almost 4 times multiple reached in the last commodity bull market. We still appear to be at an all time low relative valuation between “hard assets" versus "stocks.”
    • If history is a guide, the ratio of hard assets to stocks will have moved much higher before this commodity bull market is over.
    • How? Stocks will continue to fall and/or commodities will continue to climb – most likely a serious combination of both as investors, fearing inflation, rotate out of stocks into commodities – the cycle of “inflation, rotation, hard assets”.
    Agcapita is a Calgary based, agriculture private equity firm that allows investors to cost effectively allocate a portion of their portfolios to hard assets in the form of Canadian farmland via its professionally managed Agcapita Farmland Investment Partnership. Agcapita Farmland Investment Partnership is the third in a family of private equity funds which has grown to almost $100 million in assets under management. Agcapita’s investment team has over 40 years private equity and fund management experience and over $1 billion in total career transactions and previously managed a group of emerging market funds with almost C$500 million in assets for one of the largest banks in Europe.

    Reply
  • commenter
    bigmoney
    Oct 03 07:24 PM
    What the Sectors Are Telling Us [view article]
    I think he was referring to (corporate) bond prices falling, which is probably a flight to safety (treasuries), which drives down the price of money for government, at the exact time they pass $700 bailout. Good timing. Reply
  • commenter
    Lazy Al
    Oct 03 01:25 PM
    Getting Uglier and Uglier [view article]
    OK, dc1, I'll add something constructive:

    In the year from Sep 2001 to Oct 2002, IBM went from $120 to $56-- a much steeper decline than during the past year. It pays to keep things in perspective.

    Now YOU can add something useful--or shut up.

    Reply
  • commenter
    dc1
    Oct 03 11:51 AM
    Getting Uglier and Uglier [view article]
    To Lazy Al,

    Add something constructive or SHUT UP!     Reply
  • commenter
    The hand
    Oct 03 04:26 AM
    My Website
    Getting Uglier and Uglier [view article]
    i still like your charts. Reply
  • commenter
    Lazy Al
    Oct 02 10:03 PM
    Getting Uglier and Uglier [view article]
    Your article proves beyond doubt the market has fallen sharply in the past year.
    Duh.
    Look at charts from the bear markets of 1987 and 2002, maybe you'll learn something.

     Reply
  • commenter
    redst8r
    Oct 02 10:56 AM
    What the Sectors Are Telling Us [view article]
    I'm a bit confused (well, a bit more than normal anyhow). If bond prices are falling then bond yields must be rising. How do rising yields translate into fear of deflation? Isn't it more likely a fear of economic weakness hand in glove with inflation (the proverbial stagflation scenario)? Reply
  • commenter
    icandoitdon
    Sep 30 04:40 PM
    Don't Fight an Expensive Bull Market [view article]
    "The earnings yield of the S&P 500 is significantly above that of the 2 year note making the market currently 70% undervalued. Its hard to argue that stocks aren't the cheaper investment at this point. "

    wake up.

    the 2 year note is artificially depressed, yielding almost nothing, precisely because it is a flight to safety trade. as far as the earnings yield is concerned, current estimates for the s&p 500 are virtually worthless.

    the market is 70% undervalued. sure it is. in your dreams.     Reply
  • commenter
    alajac
    Sep 30 09:51 AM
    My Website
    Don't Fight an Expensive Bull Market [view article]
    PROTEST THE FED`S EXTORTION RACKET
    A WRITE-IN ELECTION CAMPAIGN TO REVOLUTIONIZE RESOURCE DISTRIBUTION AND TAXATION
    The `HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY` plan addresses three problems with America`s economic system which are destroying our financial security.

    Problem 1.
    America`s National Debt is approaching 10 trillion dollars and the system is less than 100 years old. Nice work. If human bodies worked like America's currency supply, every time kids grew a little they would need to take out a loan so they could buy a transfusion of new blood. We can do the same things for ourselves that the Federal Reserve does without creating any debt at all.

    Problem 2.
    The Income Tax law was drafted by the same rich guys who invented the Federal Reserve system. They came up with a way to tax us `cash cows` while simultaneously avoiding paying taxes on their own wealth. A kid right out of college shouldn`t be paying a greater percentage of his accumulated wealth in taxes than Bill Gates. We need a flat, transparent, automatically-collecte... taxation system which corresponds closely to `benefits previously received`.

    Problem 3.
    Thanks to automation, robotics and computers, the days of plentiful, highly-paid jobs employing vast numbers of manual and mental laborers are gone.
    Remember the days when there were millions of jobs that paid well enough to buy a house, two cars, an RV and a cottage on the lake...and still save plenty for retirement? If you do, then you`re pretty old. For most of us, those days are gone and they`re not coming back. To address this problem we need to either `kill off a lot of people` or else develop a new resource distribution model suitable for a world where jobs are going the way of `the buggy whip`.

    The solutions in the plan were developed from the following premises.
    1. Life is inherently unfair. The only legitimate function of government is to counter that unfairness.
    2. Whatever story they tell you, it`s always and only about `the money`.
    3. The results of any system depend on the incentives the system creates.
    4. Cooperation is not communism. When they try to tell you it is, remember #2.
    5. Property is actually owned by whoever can defend their claim to it.
    5. Within a framework of proportionately equal costs and benefits for all, advantage should fall to those born into the worst circumstances.

    Tell Congress we need a TOTALLY NEW DEAL!
    Replace the Federal Reserve System
    with U.S. Government Debt-Free Money,
    Replace the Income Tax with a tiny, flat tax on `Benefits Received`,
    and Create Better Social Security for ALL

    WRITE-IN Alan Jacquemotte for U.S. President
    More by and about alan can be found on U4Prez.com (user=alajac) and classmates.com
    Send no money, just make copies of the plan and hand them out.



    HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY a plan to stimulate the economy, lower taxes, start paying off the National Debt, alleviate poverty and decrease crime
    by replacing our OLD economic system with a NEW system based on
    a new and debt-free U.S. currency to replace Federal Reserve Debt-Money,
    a 0.5% tax on electronic transfers to replace the Federal Income Tax and the IRS,
    and $1000 per month government privatization compensation for legal U.S. residents

    The problem is always THE SYSTEM, never just `the people who screwed up`. Until we fix THE SYSTEM, similar bad things will keep on happening. Fault for the credit scam lies not with the banks and borrowers who lost their shirts and homes, but with our predecessors for allowing this SYSTEM to become law, and with ourselves for not getting rid of it earlier.

    The primary problem with the OLD SYSTEM is that `our` money (actually the Federal Reserve`s Debt-Money) leaks its purchasing power like a bucket with a hole in the bottom leaks water. The Fed dollar currently buys less than 5% of what it bought in 1913. (To view a video that makes the problems inherent in our use of the Fed`s Debt-Money much clearer, do an online search for `Zeitgeist Fed`.) There is NO BENEFIT AT ALL in having a Central Bank (well, none for us) compared to having the U.S. Treasury print and distribute to ourselves our own debt-free money, and THE ONLY DIFFERENCE between having a central bank (like the Federal Reserve System) or not, is that ``One system costs us 95% of our wealth every hundred years and puts us and our posterity into mind-boggling debt until the end of time``... and the other one doesn`t. So the first thing we need for our NEW SYSTEM is our own, debt-free U.S. Government currency, backed by the value of all of the property within the nation`s borders. Bankers will tell you this will cause the end of civilization. It won`t.
    Another problem is that the OLD SYSTEM`s income-based taxation creates wasteful tax avoidance behavior, requires an expensive tax reporting industry and an intrusive collection bureaucracy, and is, arguably, a form of `involuntary servitude`. Under a NEW SYSTEM, we could replace all income-related taxes with a one-half percent, automatically-collecte... electronic transfer tax (also known as a `debit tax`) which would be avoidable by business transactions that used only cash or barter. This change will not only rid us of the IRS (saving us the billions of dollars that are currently spent on `tax reporting`), it will also end the OLD SYSTEM`s penalization of work and entrepreneurism, as well as freeing up further untold billions currently spent on `tax avoidance`. (Also inhibits market speculation.)
    The third problem with the OLD SYSTEM is that, because governments privatize all of their claimed property (allocating it however they like), everyone winds up being denied their natural right to free access to all property without being compensated for that loss. That`s not a problem for those with access to capital and property ownership, but for the rest of us, it is totally unfair and creates a slanted playing field upon which wealth tends to gravitate to the rich and well-connected. Free-market or socialist, every government`s allocation method results in `denial to everyone of free access to all land`, for which ALL governments should provide compensation.
    Consequently, our NEW SYSTEM should pay to every legal adult resident $1000 per month (of the new, non-Fed, non-Debt-Money) which can REPLACE ALL FORMS OF PERSONAL AND CORPORATE WELFARE AND SUBSIDIES, no financial qualification required and no restriction on earning additional income (saving us billons in Social Security and Welfare bureauracracy costs and leaving Congress very little to do). Compensation for minors should be held in a trust fund to avoid incentivizing `baby factories`. Since everyone gets the same amount of compensation, this plan does NOT redistribute wealth, but will be of most help to those with the least accumulated wealth. Besides its immediate and direct assault on poverty, the benefits of this part of our NEW SYSTEM should include a reduction in crimes of all sorts, more jobs at better pay, better childcare, more rural homesteading, better maintained urban areas, no more `homeless veterans`, less intrusive and cheaper government with lower military-related expenses and a safer world in general. We can expect residents of other countries to insist their governments either copy our NEW SYSTEM or else apply for U.S. statehood (as Texas did in 1845) as soon as the see how well this NEW SYSTEM works.
    HEALTH CARE...the AMA and FDA work to constrain competition in order to maximize the medical and pharmaceutical industries` ability to extort unconscionable prices for services and substances that should be affordable out-of-pocket. We need to train up thousands more doctors and other healthcare professionals and to decriminalize and unbridle access for adults to WHATEVER drugs adults feel they need and let the market work to make prices of normal medical help and pharmacology affordable. TO KICK OUR CRUDE (OIL) HABIT, Congress could add on a 10% surcharge at the gas pump, bump it up another 10% every 6 months, and rebate the surcharge revenue in monthly equi-dollar amounts to every registered car OWNER, regardless of how much they drive. The surcharge will incentivize cheaper alternatives which will rapidly come to market, no government subsidies or mandates required.
    HELP ME SEND THIS MESSAGE to candidates running for Congress in 2010 and 2012. In order to get elected, you will need to pledge to help us THROW OFF the predatory Federal Reserve System and devise a NEW SYSTEM, one that ``provides new Guards for our future Security``. We can send a very clear message to those candidates with a MASS WRITE-IN CAMPAIGN for an unknown candidate running for no other purpose than to send that message. (That`s where I come in.) With the major parties fielding candidates who seem to be decent people but who are apparently unaware of the damage the present system is causing to us NORMAL folk, and with the 3rd parties addressing only symptoms rather than the BAD SYSTEM at cause, this election is the ideal time to vote for REAL CHANGE, not just new faces. I will register as a write-in candidate in every state from which I get emails expressing support. Pass this message along to several people every day (or, even better, to everyone you know today, and to everyone you meet from now on). IF EACH OF US EVERY DAY CONVINCE EVEN ONE OTHER PERSON TO JOIN US, OVER ONE BILLION PEOPLE CAN BE `ON BOARD` IN 30 DAYS. Get out (and online) and DO IT! For questions or more info, email alan_jacquemotte@yahoo...
    MAKE COPIES OF THIS PAGE AND HAND THEM OUT. THE HARDER WE PEDAL, THE FASTER WE`LL GET THERE.






    Reply
  • commenter
    peterthepain
    ter
    Sep 30 04:57 AM
    My Website
    Don't Fight an Expensive Bull Market [view article]
    yes...down first...earnings will fall...sure we'll go up...in time!
    but down first eh?     Reply
  • commenter
    Stone Fox
    Capital
    Sep 29 07:22 PM
    My Website
    Don't Fight an Expensive Bull Market [view article]
    The earnings yield of the S&P 500 is significantly above that of the 2 year note making the market currently 70% undervalued. Its hard to argue that stocks aren't the cheaper investment at this point. Reply
  • commenter
    RCA
    Sep 29 11:28 AM
    My Website
    Don't Fight an Expensive Bull Market [view article]
    "However, for these two key people, one of whom will soon be the elected leader of the most economically powerful nation in the world..."

    I would rephrase that to say, "the formerly most economically powerful nation in the world."

    I'm not sure that we will survive this current crisis and maintain anything resembling economic (let alone moral) leadership. The "liars and criminals" you cite, just may have taken us over the brink to the point of no return becuase of their philosophy of "Greed is good for me. The rest of you be damned!"

    The next few months will be very interesting, to say the least. We are at a watershed moment in American history. Whatever happens with the financial services industry, the credit crisis, the bailout, and the elections, we will emerge from it all a very different nation. It will be a brave new world. God help us!     Reply
  • commenter
    investor88
    Sep 29 09:09 AM
    Don't Fight an Expensive Bull Market [view article]
    Bill is getting bullish but it is not easy to follow the logic of his long article. I think market action and analysis of the underlying problems would suggests Dow 7000 before Dow 15000, and we want to navigate the immediate risks first before looking up. Reply
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