by Leslie N. Masonson, MBA The powerful VectorVest UniSearch tool provides subscribers with over 200 pre-set (default) searches (e.g., strategies) to identify stocks/ETFs that meet specific screening criteria. The four variables in the UniSearch screen have the following descriptions: Date/Time, Parameter, Operator, and Value. Each criterion in the search requires that each of these [...]
by Leslie N. Masonson, MBA My September 9th blog article on ETF investment strategies covered the basics for investors. This article focuses on ETF trading strategies, which is much more challenging than simple investing, as they may involve entering and exiting positions over minutes, hours, days or weeks, depending on the type of trading [...]
by Leslie N. Masonson, MBA Investing in the markets scares many individuals because of the emotional and financial devastation and frequency of corrections and bear markets. For example, since 2000 there have been two instances of bear markets: 49% and 56% decline during March 2000 to October 2002, and from October 2007 to March [...]
by Leslie N. Masonson, MBA Buy-and-hold investing is recommended by most financial advisors, mutual fund sponsors, and many professional money managers. Their reasoning is that the markets have a long-term upward bias, so stay fully invested at all times. They say, “Time in the market is more important market timing.” Warren Buffett says he [...]
by Leslie N. Masonson, MBA Investors and traders may not give much thought to the weighting of the ETF that they purchase. However, the price performance of the ETF is heavily dependent on how the stocks are weighted in the portfolio. I will provide a tutorial on the two weighting methods that everyone should [...]
by Leslie N. Masonson, MBA If it wasn’t for the concept and development of “indexing,” no-load mutual funds and index-based ETFs would not exist in their current format or popularity. Today, there are currently 1901 passive indexed ETFs in existence in the United States. ETF indexing is based on a sponsoring firm’s selection of [...]
by Leslie N. Masonson, MBA Purchasing ETFs is more complex than purchasing mutual funds and individual stocks when you take into account their key attributes and the dizzying number of choices available. With a universe of 3,159 ETFs, investors and traders struggling to select a few ETFs for their regular and retirement portfolios may [...]
by Leslie N. Masonson, MBA Risk is the name of the game in life as well as investing. No matter what you do there is an element of risk that things may not turn out the way you want. In the investment arena the common belief is that the riskier an investment the higher [...]
by Leslie N. Masonson, MBA Investors dream of a reasonable portfolio return devoid of risk, but that precondition does not exist and is naive. Even investing in bonds is not without risk, as investors learned in 2022, when both stocks and bonds declined by 18.6% (S&P 500) and 13.7% (Vanguard Total Bond Index --BND), [...]
by Leslie N. Masonson, MBA The investment arena is very large with multiple stock exchanges listing thousands of companies, over 26,000 mutual funds with multiple share classes, and 3,149 ETFs, as well as options on stocks and ETFs, and Futures, among other choices. How does an investor or trader decide where to start? That [...]
