Panskeptic

Gaining Global Exposure: International ETF Dividend Investing

iShares has sector ETFs based on S&P Global indices. They are convenient if you have strong sector convictions that transcend national borders.

Is the Oil Index Set to Fall?

Since commodity ETFs hit big, there have been a lot of bad decisions made by investors more comfortable with stocks.

I'm glad these commodity ETFs are there, we don't need to be protected from them, they've been good to me. But don't try to do it just on charts - you really need to understand seasonality, supply and demand factors and a fairly exotic brand of headline risk.

Commodity ETFs may trade as stocks, but they're not stocks, and the investor will get spanked repeatedly until the lesson takes.

Commodity and Bond ETFs: "Stuff" and "Safety" Beating Stocks

If you can make sector bets, do it. If you can't, diversify.

It's like when somebody says "You can't time the market," what they're really saying is "I can't time the market."

Do what you can. If you can't do something, do something else.

Do New Commodity ETFs Signal a Top?

You may be right. I'm looking at these and kicking "where were these a year ago?"

The Problem With Designer ETFs

What a lot of flapdoodle!

"A process based on the full set of information and constantly informed and updated by skilled human judgment."

Is he kidding? A cuddlesome dogma, but demonstrably false. How about intellectual laziness, herd mentality and fear of independent thought? Is Mr. Siegel against the American Revolution because George III was anointed by God to be our leader? That orthodoxy makes just as much sense.

"A full set of information?" Then how come everybody was blindsided by Bear Stearns?
Yeah, right. That's the kind of thinking that got us into this mess.

"Market cap is a function of democracy?" What addlepated nonsense! Market cap is a function of market cap, and there's more than one path to stock market Nirvana. It's Mr. Siegel's kind of chanting blind, lemming-like sloganeering that gives economics a bad name.

This article belongs on a religious or archeological website, because on a scientific basis it's dead, over, obsolete, extinct, kaput.

ETF Update: Financial ETFs, Energy Exploration and ETFs

As has been pointed out by others, the ones calling for a bottom in financials didn't see the crash coming, so who cares what they think?

And if you started tomorrow on offshore oil, it wouldn't hit the market till 2030, and at present consumption rates, we'd use it up in 2 1/2 years. This theater is just to pacify the oil guys who go nuts whenever you say, "Sorry, you can't drill there. No, it's the Washington Monument, you can't put a rig there. No. You can't." And Texas oil guys go "Whaaaaaaaaaaa!!!"

Tom, you're spending too much time with Fox Noise. All that happy talk is bad for your judgment.

Why Have Most Investment Advisers Been Slow to Adopt ETFs?

Well, doesn't that confirm every bad suspicion you've ever had about RIA's?

Passive Investing Wisdom from Taylor Larimore

Welcome to Jurassic Park!

"Mr. (John) Bogle has stated that he never met anyone who can time the stock market successfully and consistently."

I'm sorry he's never met George Soros, Paul Tudor Jones, Julian Robertson or any other of several hundred private investors and hedge fund managers who have done just that. Mr. Bogle should get out more.

Even people who say they don't market time, like Warren Buffett, wind up timing their entries and exits anyway.

Mr. Larimore's quasi-religious claptrap is utterly useless. Blind repetition of slogans doesn't make them true, but I suppose if you don't want to worship a tree or a rock, you can worship Mr. Bogle instead. And Mr. Malkiel's orthodoxy has a tough time explaining exactly what happened in the markets this year. "Random" it was not, and hasn't been for a long time.

For a 25 year period not so long ago, the markets had virtually zero return. We're just coming out of what many are calling "A Lost Decade." If you've got 10 or more investing years to waste doing nothing while the market vainly searches for a trend, good for you, but those of us with realistic actuarial estimates aren't limited to passive buy-and-die. "Stay the course" as a piece of advice has a well-deserved reputation of being utterly disastrous.

Do many people overtrade? Sure, without a doubt. Is this particular set of mantras a recipe for success? Hell, no.

P.S. The astronomical turnover in Cubes comes from institutional investors, the ones Jack Bogle has never met, not from individual white-shoe'd retirees in Florida.

Ukraine: Overlooked, Yet a Promising Emerging Market

Without a firm grip on Ukraine, Russia largely loses its access to the Black Sea and associated naval bases. Considering Russia's resurgent nationalism and superpower ambitions, this is unimaginable. You must consider political risk in exactly how far Russia will allow Ukraine to wander. NATO or the EU, for example, appear way beyond Russia's tolerance level. None of this bodes well for the future of transparent capitalism in Ukraine. There is much sound political analysis at Stratfor.com.

Constructing a Portfolio from the Top Down

+1 on thematic shorting. ETFs make it easy to short Financials, Consumer Goods, Healthcare, etc. Now DB has short commodity ETNs as well, gold, ag and broad-spectrum.

Are Subsistence Wages Killing the US?

I have no sympathy with the argument that it's the unions' fault. The unions represent a small sliver of the workforce and it's diminishing all the time. They get no positive press, not even from unionized news sources, and they're a convenient whipping boy for the greed and poor decisions of their employers.

In fact, the real villains of the piece are Reagan and Friedman and Greenspan, who presided over a massive redistribution of wealth upwards. The numbers are irrefutable: a small clique of oligarchs at the top of our pyramid hold ever-increasing wealth subsidized by transfers from below. As long as we narcotize ourselves with economic royalism and false, meaningless slogans like "the magic of the market," we'll be unable to do anything at all for the majority of Americans whose prospects are diminishing day by day.

The Golden Rule is "them's with the gold, makes the rules," and I for one am disgusted with their whining, faulty judgment and irresponsibility.

PowerShares Water ETF Lacks Focus

The article is a lot less useful than it might be, as CGW and PIO are not even mentioned. Do they have the same problems? Is one or both of them preferable? It's not at all clear.

Short Bond ETFs Get Short Shrift

If the Gann people turn out to be right and we are entering a 10-year bear market in bonds, the ultrashort ETFs will be more and more popular.

PowerShares' Latest Concept: ETFs of ETFs

Disagree. I think that there are customers waiting for this product, unlike a lot of ETFs.

PTO: How Will It Perform?

I hope PTO works, and that other ETF houses come up with competitive products. This could be one helluva way to set up IRA accounts for kids.