Health Care Select Sect SPDR (XLV)

All Comments on XLV

  • commenter
    Larry the
    Hunt
    Oct 14 07:41 AM
    Tuesday Outlook: Everything But the Kitchen Sink [view article]
    David: re recession into depression

    "The way to do that is to take all of your money out of the stock market. This will mean that businesses must shrink. You may lose your job as a result"

    Stock price has very little if anything to do with business contraction and expansion. Yes it can impact cap ratios in banks, leveraged buyouts, and the quantity of new capital through stock sales. It doesn't help, but I don't think that it is a determining factor in the economy - that's a tail wagging the dog story. I do agree if businesses aren't growing through natural demand and reinvestment of earnings, there will be stagnation, recession or worse.


    Reply
  • commenter
    mr.g
    Oct 14 06:53 AM
    Tuesday Outlook: Everything But the Kitchen Sink [view article]
    over sold/ to far to fast - for now this is a correction nothing more - as for 250 billion going into banks coffers it will buy time nothing more . US banks are overleveraged by 46% the US gdp -yes the market is calming down so what does that mean for the near future slow selling off of stocks to continue -
    2.3 trillion dollars(a little less than france's gdp) in europe isnt going to be enough either -
    if you were still in the market now or tomorrow would be the time to sell while the perma bears go for broke
    Reply
  • commenter
    David White
    Oct 14 02:33 AM
    Tuesday Outlook: Everything But the Kitchen Sink [view article]
    Oh yes, at this point in time, the futures are up substantially. It is currently looking like tomorrow will be another up day. Even if that fades as the day wears on. Remmeber the markets zigzag up. When all you hear is good news about actions the government is taking, it is unlikely that the bottom will suddenly fall out of the markets. Many people are profiting (using PUTS and short sales) from the panic they are trying to instill in the average investor. Be smart. Listen to the real news, not the gloom and doom propaganda of profiteers. If fears are easing (and the VIX does seems to be going down), don't feel the need to sell out. It is unlikely the market is going down. It is more likely the market is going up. Don't contribute your money to someone else's coffers. Reply
  • commenter
    David White
    Oct 14 02:27 AM
    Tuesday Outlook: Everything But the Kitchen Sink [view article]
    I keep hearing people compare this crash to the1929 crash. I am embarassed that there are so many people running scared. Certainly there were the bad mortgages. Then there was the complete drying up of the commercial paper market. Everyone was scared all the banks would fail. Some have. Some were saved by buyouts. The $700 billion dollar bailout should rescue us from that fate. Apparently the U.S. government is going to invest $250 billion in U.S. banks. This should provide at least the big ones with enough capital to tide them over through this tough period. The Fed is now buying commercial paper. This is already helping the commercial paper market. The housing market even had good news last week, when the number of houses sold went up for a change (even though they sold at lower prices). The Wells Fargo buyout of Wachovia is going through. Mitsubishi is buying into Morgan Stanley. Everything is turning rosy. The market bounced off a strong support point last week. There is strong support at $82 and $85 on the SPY. After that there are no strong support points until the $42 to $45 range in the SPY. The SPY hit $83 and change last week intraday. It bounced upward. There is every indication that this is at least a near term bottom. It may turn out to be the longer term market bottom we have all been hoping for. Only time will tell that. However, it does look like a strong bounce for the moment. The immediate big bank failure fear is gone. The belief is that the government and the Fed are slowly bringing the commercial paper market back. The government has promised several actions to shore up the housing market. This is starting to be a little bit less worrisome, especially if there are further programs enacted to further shore it up. In normal market bounces, the market goes up in zig zag lines for about a month or more. It appears we should be able to expect this again. Perhaps it will be better than that. Perhaps we have hit bottom. Only time will tell that.

    Still this is not another coming of the great depression. How do I know that? I look at history. Look at the changes in the laws. Look at the improvement in the Fed and the Treasury. In the 1920's the market just kept going up, unreasonably so. People were so happy with it they invested as much as they could, so they could get richer faster. This meant that many people were heavily margined. In those days the laws allowed up to 90% margin (i.e. you only had to have 10% of the stock value to buy it). When the margin calls started coming in the great crash, everyone had to sell. Those that were not as heavily margined had to sell to avoid losing all they had because a lot of people were heavily margined. The result was that almost all investment in stocks ended. With no money from the stock market to feed their expansion, etc., virtually all businesses shrank. They could do nothing else. The housing market collapsed then too. A lot of people lost everything. This is why the margin requirements law was changed. This is why many people today have no margin at all. They just own stocks through mutual funds. People like Jim Cramer did not help the situation. There was some severe panic. That should be lessening.

    This is likely a bad recession. Perhaps it is comparable to the mid 1970's recession. However, there is no reason to believe it should be a great depression unless we make it into one. The way to do that is to take all of your money out of the stock market. This will mean that businesses must shrink. You may lose your job as a result. If you stop spending because you are scared, business's profits will fall drastically. People will lose there jobs. Again there will be a cascade effect. As FDR said so many years ago, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. It is this fear, this panic, that can really destroy our system. Have a little faith in the government. Have a little faith in your economic system. Spend prudently, but spend. Invest prudently, but invest. The sky is not falling. Don't make it.

    My personal belief is that this is at least a rally off a near term low (which may have been an actual bottom). The big profit is to be made in the early stages of that rally. Listen to the fear mongers, and you will miss it. If you do invest, monitor the markets. If we start getting a lot more news about bank failures, or the commercial paper market drying up, or even about a lot of businesses going bankrupt, then consider selling again. However, you should not make all that a foregone conclusion by insisting on a death spiral, when it doesn't have to happen. Sometimes "fear" really is the thing we have to fear most.     Reply
  • commenter
    granger
    Oct 11 02:41 AM
    Market Strategy: Sector vs. Style [view article]
    One of the best article I have read. Great info, very insighful tool for understanding price performance. Thank you. Reply
  • commenter
    The World's
    Worst Stock
    Picker
    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
    Alan von
    Altendorf
    Sep 28 01:35 AM
    My Website
    What To Do in a Rebuilding Year [view article]
    So, 1929 was a rebuilding year? Reply
  • commenter
    LarryH
    Sep 27 11:07 PM
    What To Do in a Rebuilding Year [view article]
    Eleven paragraphs of fluff. You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble (and for the reader) by just saying "go for quality." That's your simple answer to your big buildup. Your article is actually about what the sectors have done. That is rather common knowledge. Sorry. I am a former English teacher, and you are guilty of false advertising. Not good in an essay. Reply
  • commenter
    danf
    Sep 27 06:44 PM
    My Website
    As Economy Worsens, Americans Start Cutting Back on Healthcare [view article]
    Interesting. It does reflect my choices...Many doctors visits are for marginally treatable ailments like colds. Many others are for obscure, chronic ailments. Health care works well for symptoms that point to obvious problems whose diagnosis yields to testing. The current care system does not work well for anything other than those obvious testable issues.

    My experience with a chronic ailment has taught me that often times spending money in the health system is wasted money....

    When insurance is paying, people are indifferent to the waste. When it's your own money, one looks for value for money spent.

    I also find it curious that a visit to the vet is $25 and a visit to the doctor is $100. In many cases, I think my dog gets better care. Maybe it's because the vet can't count on insurance paying the bill.
     Reply
  • commenter
    buyitcheap
    Sep 27 04:05 PM
    What To Do in a Rebuilding Year [view article]
    Good article - but I'd broaden the time range to perhaps rebuilding decade - this market has been a complete disaster for the last 8 years for the passive investor. Ibelieve I've seen this period referred to as the "lost decade." Reply
  • commenter
    John Egan
    Sep 26 02:07 PM
    Bespoke's Sector Snapshot (9/25/08) [view article]
    Thanks! jegan Reply
  • commenter
    John Egan
    Sep 25 04:20 PM
    As Economy Worsens, Americans Start Cutting Back on Healthcare [view article]
    Very novel and timely article..... Thanks jegan Reply
  • commenter
    Schweizer
    Sep 16 03:31 PM
    Percentage of Stocks Above 50-Day Moving Averages [view article]
    Yup. Bullish percents are also no where near where they were on July 15th (they need to be oversold), so there is a lot more to go. Reply
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