Brackets, Blizzards & Bitcoin

Monday, March 13, 2017 - This past week marked the first weekly loss in 6 weeks for the broad based U.S. equity markets. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 Index and NASDAQ all were down for the week trimming .5%, .4%, and .2% respectively. Driven by the plunge in oil prices, Energy took the biggest hit with a 2.75% loss, closely followed by Utilities and Materials which lost 1.09% and 1.04% respectively.

A release on Wednesday reported an 8.2 million barrel increase in domestic crude supply for last week causing the total inventory to reach a new weekly high of 528.4 million - the barrel price of domestic crude oil dropped below $50 for the first time since December. Two of the few sectors that did well this week were Real Estate and Health Care as President Trump supports the House GOP’s effort to replace Obamacare. According to Friday’s report, the US added 235,000 jobs in February, while the unemployment rate decreased by 4.7% which has investors looking forward to this week as the Fed is now expected to announce its next rate hike on March 15.

In ETF news, The SEC on Friday denied a request to list what would have been the first U.S. ETF built to track Bitcoin. Major Investors in bitcoin, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, have been trying for over three years to convince the SEC to allow the Bitcoin ETF to market. The SEC believes that the significant markets for bitcoin are still unregulated. As a result of this ruling, the bitcoin dropped 20% within the next few hours and rebounded over the weekend. The Winklevoss twins still believe a bitcoin ETF is still possible.

This week in our Quant Movers Section the biggest gainers are: PTEU, Pacer Trendpilot European Index ETF, gained 9.11%, DES, WisdomTree SmallCap Dividend Fund, gained 7.55%, and VDC, Vanguard Consumer Staples ETF, gained 7.1%. All 3 funds are Developed Market Equities.

The biggest drops in ETFG Quant Mover were  QMN, IQ Hedge Market Neutral Tracker ETF,  which lost 10.07%, EPI, WisdomTree India Earnings Fund which lost 7.58%, and DDBI, Legg Mason Developed EX-US Diversified Core ETF which lost 6.77%.

This week our Select List had a lot of new funds reach their top spot in their respective categories. CIBR, First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF, in the Technology Category, EPU, iShares MSCI All Peru Capped ETF, in the Latin America Category. HMM, John Hancock Multifactor Mid Cap ETF, in the Mid Cap Category, and  IJR, iShares Core S&P Small-Cap ETF in the Small Cap category.

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