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06 Aug: XLK Weekly

XLK includes market segments like IT services, wireless telecommunication services, and semiconductors to name just a few. The fund invests in the who’s-who of the U.S. tech sector, with major holdings in companies like Apple and IBM. The fund splits its assets mainly between the technology and communication services sectors, while allocating mainly to giant and large cap firms. One of the major strengths of this ETF is the fact that it does not single out a particular sector; rather it invests in companies from all across the technology sector.

06 Aug: IWM

IWM ETF is one of several offering exposure to the Russell 2000 Index, a widely followed measure of small cap U.S. stocks. Given this investment objective, IWM may be useful in a number of different ways; more active investors may use this fund as a way to establish short-term exposure to a risky asset class when risk tolerance is expected to climb, while IWM can also be appealing as a way of accessing an asset class that should be included in any long-term, buy-and-hold portfolio.

06 Aug: GDX

GDX offers investors exposure to some of the largest gold mining companies in the world, thereby delivering what can be thought of as “indirect” exposure to gold prices. Because the profitability of gold miners depends on the prevailing market price for the goods that they sell, these stocks will generally exhibit a strong correlations to movements in spot gold prices. When gold prices go up, gold miners make more money (and vice versa). It should be noted, however, that this relationship is not perfect; in certain environments, gold miner stocks and physical gold prices can move in opposite directions, and correlation between the two can be less than perfect.

06 Aug: EEM

EEM is one of the most popular ETFs in the world, and is one of the oldest products on the market offering exposure to stock markets of emerging economies. Given this objective, EEM can be used in a number of different ways; this ETF can be equally useful as a short-term trade to increase exposure to risky assets or as a core holding in a long-term, buy-and-hold portfolio. EEM

06 Aug: NYMO/SPX200

NYMO & SPX200R are excellent momentum indicators that provide a peek “under the hood” of what happening beneath the surface to monitor what real market breadth is signalling. Depending on how the charts look, they provide insight whether a rally is “narrow” or “broad” depending on how many stocks are actually participating in an advance…

05 Aug: Bitcoin / Crypto

Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency. There are no physical bitcoins, only balances kept on a public ledger that everyone has transparent access to. All bitcoin transactions are verified by a massive amount of computing power. Bitcoins are not issued or backed by any banks or governments, nor are individual bitcoins valuable as a commodity. Despite it not being legal tender, Bitcoin is very popular and has triggered the launch of hundreds of other cryptocurrencies, collectively referred to as altcoins. Bitcoin is commonly abbreviated as “BTC.”