Skip to main content

Ride the momentum train -- this week's strongest ProShares ETFs

It's no secret this market has increased in volatility lately. In this post we look for signs of sector momentum in the short term moves of the ProShares leveraged ETFs. These favorites of traders, individual investors and institutions alike have been used as hedges, contrarian indicators, momentum plays and vehicles to juice up portfolios.

The following table lists those members of the ProShares family that have turned in the best performance over the course of the last week (the period from last Tuesday through this Monday):

Symbol Fund Name Group Objective Percent Change
JPX UltraShort MSCI Pacific ex-Japan Short 200% of the Inverse 7.9%
SJH UltraShort Russell2000 Value Short 200% of the Inverse 7.7%
SMN UltraShort Basic Materials Short 200% of the Inverse 7.7%
SRS UltraShort Real Estate Short 200% of the Inverse 7.6%
SIJ UltraShort Industrials Short 200% of the Inverse 7.0%
SSG UltraShort Semiconductors Short 200% of the Inverse 6.7%
EWV UltraShort MSCI Japan Short 200% of the Inverse 6.4%
SKF UltraShort Financials Short 200% of the Inverse 6.4%
TWM UltraShort Russell2000 Short 200% of the Inverse 6.2%
EFU UltraShort MSCI EAFE Short 200% of the Inverse 6.0%

Noticeable in their absence are the Ultra Gold (UGL) and Ultra Silver (AGQ) ETFs. Precious metals had been on a roll as investors looked for a safe haven. That trend seems to be on the wane.

With a couple of double short ETFs focused on the Russell 2000 making this list, it appears that investors are abandoning small caps.

Foreign stocks are also pretty out of favor. On this list are double short ETFs that track MSCI Pacific ex-Japan, Japan itself and the MSCI EAFE. Furthermore, Basic Materials are being shunned. This is a sign that investors have their doubts about robustness of the global economy in general. And keep in mind that basic materials are important for emerging market countries that are often big exporters of raw materials. So this is a case of the market voting against developed countries and developing countries alike.

Conclusion --

Given that the list above is comprised entirely of double short ETFs, it shows which sectors have been most out of favor and suggests how a fairly active trader might look to catch some gains while accepting the downward momentum of small stocks, foreign stocks, basic materials and other sectors represented above.

On the other hand, if you look at ProShares activity as a contrary indicator, then perhaps you should look at some of the double long ETFs in these sectors.

In any case, if you would like to see a list like this every week, let me know by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

In the meantime, perhaps you should consider embracing the volatility and riding the momentum with one of these ProShares ETFs.

Disclosure: no positions in any ETFs listed in this article (unfortunately)
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Brazil - in a bubble or on a roll?

A couple of years ago, no one recognized the real estate bubble even though it was under everyone's nose. Now, analysts and bloggers are seeing bubbles everywhere they look. One of them, they say is in Brazil whose Bovespa stock market index has doubled in the last 12 months. Does the bubble accusation hold water? I don't think so and here are 7 reasons why Brazil is by no means a bubble economy: Exports have held up over the past year thanks to demand from China for Brazil's soya exports and iron ore. This was helped by the the Brazilian government's drive to improve trade links with Asia and Africa. Export diversification, spurred by a more active trade policy and increased focus on "south-south" trade under current president Lula, helped mitigate the decline in demand from OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries A "sensible" economic framework has been in place since the 1990's. This has included inflation
4 comments
Read more

Thursday Bounce: Trend Busters, Swing Signals and Trend Leaders for July 9, 2009

This is a quick post to announce that we have published Thursday's Trend Leaders, Swing Signals and Trend Busters at Alert HQ . All are based on daily data. Today we have the following: 72 Swing Signals -- A couple of days ago we had 35 signals, today we have twice as many. Happily, we now have 65 BUY signals, a mere 4 SELL Signals plus 3 Strong BUYs. Whoo-hoo! 56 Trend Leaders , all in strong up-trends according to Aroon, MACD and DMI. There are 18 new stocks that made today's list and 60 that fell off Tuesday's list. 48 Trend Busters of which 5 are BUY signals and 43 are SELL signals The view from Alert HQ -- Talk about mixed signals. If you look at our Swing Signals list you would think the market was in the middle of a big bounce. BUY signals are swamping the SELL signals and we even have a few Strong BUYs. Yes, there's a good sprinkling of tech stocks and tech ETFs but the distribution is pretty broad-based with a good number of different sectors represented, eve
1 comment
Read more

Unlock Stock Market Profits - Key #1

This is the first in an ongoing series of articles where I discuss what I feel are keys to successful investing. It is based on a post that provides a summary of the ten keys that individual investors should use to identify profitable stock trades. ( Click here to read the original post ) There are two basic steps to investing. First, you need to find stocks that seem to have some potential. Then you have to determine whether these stocks are actually good investments. There are many stocks that at first glance look interesting, but further research reveals that there are too many negatives to warrant taking a position. This first post in the series starts at the beginning: getting good investment ideas. Key #1: If something special is happening to a stock, it will be reflected in some kind of unusual activity in the markets. As individual investors, we will never be the first to know; however, unusual activity can be an early sign that allows us to follow the Wall Street professional
4 comments
Read more