SPDR Jumps 32.3% in 2013

Last year was a banner year for U.S. stocks and the ETFs that tracked them.

• Large caps in the S&P500 SPDR (SPY) soared 32.3%, their best performance since 1997, topping the index’s 29.6% rally.
• Small caps in the iShares Russell 2000 (IWM) surged 38.7%.
• All U.S. sectors posted gains:
• Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR (XLY) rocketed 42.7%.
• Health Care Select Sector SPDR (XLV) surged 41.4%.
• Industrials Select Sector SPDR (XLI) soared 40.5%.
• Financials Select Sector SPDR (XLF) jumped 35.5%.
• Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR (XLP) rose 2.63%.
• Energy Select Sector SPDR (XLE) leapt gained 26.3.%.
• Materials Select Sector SPDR (XLB) advanced 26.0%.
• Technology Select Sector SPDR (XLK) climbed 26.3%.
• Safe haven Utilities Select Sector SPDR (XLU) did the worst, but still gained 13.0%.
• Outside the U.S., developed markets tracked by the iShares MSCI EAFE ETF (EFA) gained 21.4% as investors noticed Europe’s bargain valuations and Abenomics fueled a rally in Japan.
• However, the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets (EEM) lost 3.7% as the resource-dependent economies of Brazil and South Africa saw sizeable declines.

All results are total returns, with dividends factored in

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ING Likes Value Stocks, Emerging Markets and Europe in 2013

Just like the Christmas season, forecast season rolls around this time of year with investment advisors predicting what the new year holds and where we should all be putting our investment dollars. Ahead of us looms the fiscal cliff, a combination of tax increases and large government spending cuts that could chop as much as 4% out of the gross domestic product. Should the fiscal cliff go into effect it could put the current tepid economic recovery into jeopardy.

In a press briefing at ING’s offices Tuesday, Paul Zemsky, ING Investment Management’s chief investment officer of multi-asset strategies, said he expects the fiscal cliff to be resolved by the end of this year, with a negative impact of just 1% to 1.5% to GDP. He expects to see an end to the payroll tax holiday and the Bush tax cuts for the highest-income brackets. He also expects capital gains taxes to rise to 20% and dividend taxes to revert back to taxpayers’ regular rate from 15% now. Should the Congress wait until after the new year, Zemsky expects to see a major sell off in the equity markets. “It could be as much as a 10% drop, but we would expect this to be a V-shape bounce because the government would have to fix the problem. We would consider this a buying opportunity should it happen.”

Stocks remain cheap relative to bonds, said Zemsky, and both U.S. and global equities are attractive investments right now with price-to-earnings ratios around 15. Zemsky said the housing market has bottomed and is poised to rise, however investors have not yet realized this. As housing prices bottom, this makes collateral stronger, said Zemsky, adding now is the time to increase investments in U.S. financial stocks.

Overall, ING expects 2013 will bring modest growth in the U.S., continued growth in emerging markets and the end of the European recession. Zemsky’s overall forecast predicts U.S. GDP to see 2% to 3% growth next year, which will lead to 5% to 7% earnings growth in the S&P 500. He expects the S&P 500 to grow 8% to 10% next year with a year-end target price between 1550 and 1600. U.S. value stocks and emerging market equities look especially attractive in 2013.

The most popular ETFs tracking these areas of the market are the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY), the Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF) and the Vanguard MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (VWO). Click here for a list of ETFs that track U.S. value stocks.

Zemsky added that it might be time to begin overweighting European equities. He said people are too negative on Europe. While there is still risk in there, he said the Euro Zone is beginning to stabilize and this could lead to higher equity prices. Click here for a list of ETFs that track European stocks.

As for the bond market, Christine Hurtsellers, ING’s chief investment officer of fixed income and proprietary investments, said the U.S. market is not pricing in any changes in policy from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank. She says it’s time to underweight U.S. Treasury bonds and high quality investment grade U.S. credit. She recommends moving into emerging market debt, especially high-grade sovereign debt. The PowerShares Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt Portfolio (PCY) covers this market.

Europe’s Financial Crisis Sends U.S. Stocks Lower

Fears over the state of European banks after the European Central Bank lent dollars to a eurozone bank sent European markets plunging and have started a huge sell-off in the U.S. One bidder borrowed $500 million from the ECB and the news suggests at least one bank is having problems getting the cash it needs, according to Financial Times and CNBC.

At Thursday’s close, the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) tumbled 4.3% to $114.51.
The SPDR Financial Select Sector Fund (XLF) sunk 4.8% to $12.38.
The SPDR Technology Select Sector Fund (XLK) fell 4.9% to $23.08.
And finally, the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) rose 1.9% to $177.72.

Last week regulators in Italy, Belgium, France and Spain banned short-selling of financial stocks in an effort to curb volatility and bring some order to markets. How is that working out for you? Meanwhile, it’s nearly impossible to get any numbers on the shorting of U.S. stocks or ETFs on short notice, I wouldn’t be surprised if investors were using U.S. ETFs to short the European financial stocks.

Meanwhile, here are 4 funds that measure global financial stocks.
iShares MSCI Europe Financials Sector Index Fund (EUFN), of which banks make up 52% of the portfolio, plummeted 8% to $16.68.
iShares S&P Global Financials Sector Index Fund (IXG) plunged 5.2% to $36.99.
SPDR EURO STOXX 50 (FEZ) dived 5.5% to $31.06.
iShares MSCI United Kingdom Index Fund (EWU) skidded 4.6% to $15.71.

Finally, the ProShare UltraShort MSCI EAFE Fund surged 9.7% to $28.75. With a ticker of (EFU), this is probably the most appropriate sentiment of the day.

XLF Rallies on Bank Buying Bullishness

StreetInsider.com reports that the Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF) is surging today as investors aggressively buy bank stocks on the heels of the group’s recent bounce.

Midafternoon, the Financial Select Sector SPDR. which tracks all the financial-services companies in the S&P 500 Index, was up 1%, compared to the 0.2% rise in the S&P 500. The ETF had been up as much as 1.2%.

To highlight the level of investors interest, mid afternoon Wednesday, the trading volume in the Financial Select Sector SPDR was 45 million shares, topping the 37 million traded in the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY), normally the most activity traded ETF on the market. On an average day, the SPDR trades 179 million, twice as much as XLF’s 88 million.

Despite normally slow volume during this holiday week, XLF is on pace to top its daily average.

9 ETFs Make Up 18% of Total U.S. Volume

Abel/Noser, an agency-only broker, released a market liquidity study for July saying ETFs dominated trading on the U.S. stock markets, with nine ETFs representing 18% of the total daily domestic volume, reports StreetInsider.com.

Those nine ETFs were: the SPDR (SPY), iShares Russell 2000 Index (IWM), PowerShares QQQ (QQQQ), iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index (EEM), SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), UltraShort S&P500 ProShares (SDS), iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA), Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF) and Direxion Daily Financial Bull 3X Shares (FAS).

According to the July ETF Report released by the National Stock Exchange today, the top five ETF providers in terms of volume, in descending order, are State Street Global Advisors, BlackRock, ProShares, Direxion and Invesco/PowerShares. Together, their share volume for the month of July was 27.6 billion shares, or 54% of the NYSE Group Volume in all stocks traded, 50.6 billion shares. This number doesn’t include Nasdaq volume.

In addition, Abel/Noser said six stocks accounted for more than 10% of the domestic principal traded. The six stocks: Apple, Bank of America, Citigroup, Microsoft, Exxon Mobil and Intel.

The top 105 stocks represented more than half of the day’s volume, says the study, while the top 975 names accounted for 90% of all the volume. The renaming 17,399 securities accounted for just 10% of the daily volume on the market. These numbers were little changed from June.

Select Sector SPDRs Sue Over Shadow Symbols

The Select Sector SPDR Trust sued INVESCO PowerShares Capital Management over ticker symbols. Filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Houston, the suit charges PowerShares with trademark infringement and misappropriation.

Select Sector SPDRs offers a family of ETFs that divides the S&P 500 into nine individual sector funds. In April, PowerShares launched a family of nine sector ETFS for the small-cap market based on the S&P 600, a small-cap index. (Blog Postings: Small-Cap Investors Get Sector Funds and Sector ETFs Help You Avoid Single-Stock Risk)

The PowerShares funds, which trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market, use four-letter ticker symbols that add an “S” to the end of the ticker for the Select Sector SPDR funds covering the same industry. Those trade on the NYSE Arca.

“This is a deliberate and unconscionable act on the part of PowerShares to confuse both institutional and retail investors,” said Dan Dolan, director of wealth management strategies for the Select Sector SPDR Trust in a written statement. “PowerShares has succeeded in casting an unfortunate shadow on Wall Street’s efforts to eliminate financial opacity.”

Dolan noted that 101 out of 102 ETFs previously launched by PowerShares have tickers that start with “P.” The sector funds in question are the only products in PowerShares ETF family that begin with an “X.”

Below is a list of the funds side-by-side:

Sector SPDR Consumer Discretionary (XLY)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Consumer Discretionary Portfolio (XLYS)

Sector SPDR Consumer Staples (XLP)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Consumer Staples Portfolio (XLPS)

Sector SPDR Energy (XLE)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Energy Portfolio (XLES)

Sector SPDR Financials (XLF)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Financials Portfolio (XLFS)

Sector SPDR Health Care (XLV)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Health Care Portfolio (XLVS)

Sector SPDR Industrials (XLI)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Industrials Portfolio (XLIS)

Sector SPDR Materials (XLB)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Materials Portfolio (XLBS)

Sector SPDR Technology (XLK)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Information Technology Portfolio (XLKS)

Sector SPDR Utilities (XLU)
PowerShares S&P SmallCap Utilities Portfolio (XLUS)

Calling the PowerShares symbols “astoundingly similar,” Dolan told the Wall Street Journal: “I don’t think there’s any other way of looking at it than they’re trying to jump on our back.”

He’s right, of course. If PowerShares planned to latch onto this already understood product, it was a brilliant marketing strategy. The Select Sector SPDRs are probably the most recognizable ETFs in the world. Their marketing campaign of spiders making webs in the shapes of industry icons, such as an oil rig for its energy ETF or a stethoscope for the health care ETF, has been a huge success, both in explaining that ETFs are financial products and what a select sector is. Traders, large and small, call stocks by their tickers not their company names. So, if you wanted the small-cap fund for energy, instead of XLE, you would simply remember the “S” for small.

The question becomes who owns a ticker symbol and can you trademark the first two or three letters of a ticker symbol? Currently, the Intermarket Symbols Reservation Authority, run by the Options Clearing Corp., or OCC, assigns ticker symbols to companies and ETFs. “The ISRA operates a uniform, transparent system for the selection, reservation, assignment and transfer of securities trading symbols by NMS Plan participants.”

Since there are only so many possibilities for three- and four-letter combinations, aren’t there always going to be tickers similar to yours? For instance, most people assume INTL is the ticker for Intel, but it’s not; it’s INTC. Surprisingly, among the many media outlets that reported this story, no one seems to have called the OCC for its opinion.

I did, but the OCC hasn’t gotten back to me.

Meanwhile, I would say the amount of market confusion is minimal. The Journal says the nine Select Sector SPDRS have $31 billion in assets under management. Meanwhile, the nine PowerShares funds in question hold only $50 million. Most hold less than $6 million, and have an average daily trading volume of less than 10,000 shares a day. The Select Sector SPDRS see average daily volumes in the tens of millions.

Top Movers in a Volatile Market

Street Insider.com lists some of the most active ETFs today.

At 2 pm:

iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) rose 8.37% to $28.30, on midday volume of 44 million shares, already four times more than its daily average volume. The ETF tracks the CBOE VIX, which is up 28.5% today to a near-term high of $42.15.

United States Natural Gas (UNG) gained 1.2% to $6.89 midafternoon on volume of 20.2 million vs. 26.8 daily average.

Utilities Select Sector SPDR (XLU) up 0.34% to $29.35, volume was already double the daily average at 10.6 million. People are moving to utilities for safety and dividends.

United States Oil (USO) fell 1.89% to $36.26 as crude oil futures posted steep losses for the fourth consecutive day. Mid-morning, the June 10 contracts hit an 11-week low near $74.50 a barrel, but were down $1.46 to $75.43 late afternoon. Volume was up 80% to 18 million.

Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF) was actually flat at 2 p.m. at $15.26. Volume had surged to 260 million from a daily average of 103 million. Goldman Sachs (GS) is up 1.7% to $144.65 in the wake of its annual shareholder meeting.

Pressure on Gold May be Buying Opportunity

The Goldman story is affecting gold according to 24/7 Wall Street. On Friday, the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) lost 2.1% to $111.24. The guys at 24/7 reason that the Paulson & Co. hedge fund implicated in the scandal is heavily invested in gold. However, if investors pull out, the fund may need to sell gold to cash them out, putting downward pressure on the yellow metal. I think this is argument is a nonstarter. Most hedge funds require 60 to 90 days notice before investors can cash out. So, this sell off won’t happen for a while. This means, that gold may have been beaten down without good reason, and that Monday is a buying opportunity.

Meanwhile, The New York Times said on Saturday that Wall Street firms tent to settle cases like this one, but Goldman’s statement on Friday that it intends to fight may create a big problem. While the refusal to settle was intended to discourage investor lawsuits, this could set Goldman up for a long, messy public battle. The paper added that several European banks that lost money in the deal may try to recoup the money from Goldman.

Then Sunday, the Times added two congressmen want a deeper investigation into taxpayer losses while Britain’s prime minister asked his country’s securities regulator to investigate the Goldman due to losses incurred by the Royal Bank of Scotland. Germany added it may take legal action as well.

It appears Yahoo!Finance had it wrong. They didn’t even mention the volume of the Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF) which was the third most traded stock on Friday with 380.6 million shares traded, topping the SPDR (SPY) and Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3x (FAZ), which it said had the third highest volume. On Friday, XLF fell 3.7% to $16.36 and the ProShares Ultra Financials (UYG), the one that gives 2x the positive return on the financial sector, lost 6.6% to $71.65.

Big ETF Moves on Goldman News

Exciting day on Wall Street as the Securities and Exchange Commission sends a shot across the bow of Goldman Sachs.

The stock market started out mildly higher, when midmorning, the SEC charged Wall Street’s most influential bank with fraud over its marketing of a subprime mortgage product designed to fail. The SEC says a Goldman vice president was also charged with fraud for his responsibility for creating the questionable mortgage product, known as ABACUS. Surprisingly, criminal charges were not filed.

However, this makes many question whether the bull run of the last year is over.

According to Reuters, the SEC alleged that Goldman structured and marketed ABACUS, a synthetic collateralized debt obligation that hinged on the performance of subprime residential mortgage-backed securities. However, Goldman allegedly didn’t tell investors “vital information” about ABACUS, including that the hedge fund Paulson & Co helped choose the securities in the portfolio. Run by John Paulson, the hedge fund made billions of dollars betting that the housing market would crash. The SEC also alleged that Paulson took a short position against the CDO in a bet that its value would fall, reported Reuters. “This included an estimated $1 billion from the transaction detailed in the SEC lawsuit, which the agency said cost other investors more than $1 billion,” said Reuters.

Many people on Wall Street have said this is a politically motivated moved as Congress begins debating reform of financial industry regulation.

Goldman denied the charges. Its stock fell $23.57, or 12.8%, to $160.70, and it brought down the entire market with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing 126 points, or 1.1% to 11018.66. The S&P 500 dropped 19.5 points, or 1.6%, to 1192.13.

Obviously, this means a lot of movement among ETFs.

The Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3x (FAZ) jumped $1.14, or 10.3%, to $12.18, posting the third-largest volume of the market gainers, 209.7 million shares.

ProShares UltraShort S&P 500 (SDS) gained 94 cents, or 3.3%, to $29.72.

ProShares UltraShort Financials (SKF) jumped $1.15, or 6.8%, to $18.11.

The Financials Select Sector SPDR (XLF) fell 62 cents, or 3.7%, to $16.36.

ETFs See $635 Million in Outflows

Has the stock market peaked? According to Morgan Stanley’s ETF Weekly Update for April 5, ETFs saw outflows of $635 million last week.

U.S. large-cap ETFs posted the largest net outflows on both a one-week and 13-week basis. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) was the primary driver of the move, posting the largest outflows for all U.S. listed ETFs on both the one-week, $1.8 billion, and 13-week basis, $7.3 billion. Going against the trend, the PowerShares QQQ (QQQQ) surprisingly had the largest one-week net inflow for an ETF holding U.S. assets, at $307 million.

Meanwhile, the two areas with the strongest net inflows are fixed income and international equity. With a 14% share, fixed income is now the third largest segment of the U.S. ETF market. The Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock ETF (VWO) posted the strongest net inflows for all U.S.-listed ETFs over the 13-week period, $2.6 billion.

On the short interest front, the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) saw the largest increase in short positions, up 6%, or 12.5 million shares, from 211 million shares on Feb. 26. The Financials Select Sector SPDR (XLF) saw the largest decline in short interest, falling 14%, or 22.8 million shares, from 158 million shares short as of Feb. 26.

Morgan Stanley says “first-to-market continues to be a big driver of success for new ETFs, and with the exception of ETFS Physical Swiss Gold Shares (SGOL), each of the most successful recent launches was the first ETF to market within a specific segment.” Four different asset classes are represented in the top 10 launches, with equity, fixed income and commodity each having three.

The report lists the most successful recent launches by assets.

• Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF (GDXJ), with a market cap of $908 million.
• Market Vectors Brazil Small-Cap ETF (BRF), $693 million.
• ETFS Physical Platinum Shares (PPLT), $495 million.
• Vanguard FTSE All World ex-US Small-Cap ETF (VSS), $459 million.
• PIMCO 1-5 Year U.S. TIPS Index Fund (STPZ), $429 million.
• ProShares Short 20+ Year Treasury (TBF), $404 million.
• WisdomTree Dreyfus Emerging Currency Fund (CEW), $400 million.
• ETFS Gold Trust (SGOL), $360 million.
• SPDR Barclays Capital Convertible Bond ETF (CWB), $290 million.
• ETFS Physical Palladium Share (PALL), $251 million.

Over the last week, only four saw net inflows: ETFS Physical Platinum Shares ($16 million); PIMCO 1-5 Year U.S. TIPS Index Fund ($10 million); ProShares Short 20+ Year Treasury ($22 million); and WisdomTree Dreyfus Emerging Currency Fund ($2 million).