Call Us (866) 295-0166Change Chart Color Bar Colors
If your printing charts, doing a presentation, or just want to mix things up, changing the color of the chart tickers is easy. Change color bar color Right click the name of the ticker/ ticker input you wan to change. Select “change color” Next, select the color from the pallet and the window will auto […]
Read MoreHow to Choose an Benchmark – Market Indexes
We get lots of questions about indexes, specifically what are the appropriate indexes to use on the spreadsheet benchmark field. The short answer is… for US Equities use an US equity benchmark (SP-DA – S&P 500 div adjusted) and bonds use a bond benchmark (AGG-X – Barclays Aggregate Bond Ix) . But, if you’re doing […]
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FT Cloud - Posted in Market Commentary, Strategy
Mar, 19, 2018
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A New Twists on Smart Beta
Smart beta is getting a lot of attention from the financial press and new products are coming to market daily. FastTrack is adding 20-30 a month. A great quote from the linked article speaks to the scale: “Investors handed $184 billion to smart beta ETFs from 2015 to 2017 while pulling $308 billion from equity […]
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- Posted in Data News, Market Commentary, Strategy
- Mar, 13, 2018
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Is Passive Investing Actually Active?
Interesting article on the development of passive investment products. “There are now so many indexes that putting your money in an index-tracking fund is a move requiring an active decision…” So, even largely passive strategies require some judgement or active management. There’s over 3 million indexes and only 3,000 investable stocks in the US. So, […]
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- Posted in Market Commentary, Strategy
- Mar, 05, 2018
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Data Quality – Screening Funds and ETFs
Here’s a great illustration of why you need dividend adjustments when analyzing funds and ETFs. QLENX (a lower risk AQR managed long short fund) has been popular with FastTrackers for a few years and it would be totally off your radar if you’re using Yahoo, CNBC, Fidelity, or any number of other free data outfits […]
Read MoreHow to invest in Artificial Intelligence
There’s lots of buzz surrounding AI (artificial intelligence). It’s changing the world as we know it and also is showing strong out performance over the past year. Here’s a list of AI related names in the FastTrack database. The charts below shows the relative strength chart vs SPY of the two most popular ETFs, BOTZ […]
Charting Bitcoin with FastTrack
Bitcoin is back on the front page, breaking above above the $10k mark again last week. While its a speculative asset class and typically not something a FastTracker would devote much capital, we have been getting a good number of calls about Bitcoin, Blockchain, and related tech. What do we think, worth a gamble? He’re […]
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- Posted in Data News, Market Commentary
- Feb, 20, 2018
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How are low volatility ETFs holding up?
Over the past 5+ years a variety of low volatility equity ETFs have launched with rapid growth. In light of the recent market volatility, how are the funds holding up? The top three are listed below and have a combined AUM of $24 billion: SPHD – PowerShares ETF S&P 500 High Div Low Vol SPLV […]
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- Posted in Market Commentary, Strategy
- Feb, 12, 2018
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Even with Poor Timing, Stocks Still Produce Wealth
Great quotes on investing for the long term. Even if your timing is the worst, over the long term equities have been “the best generator of wealth.” See the FT Cloud Spreadsheet shots confirming the quote. “If you look back historically, at the top in 1987 since then the annualized returns in the S&P 500 […]
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- Posted in Uncategorized
- Feb, 06, 2018
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Smart Beta and High Yield
We’re highlighting smart beta and actively managed ETFs again this week. While still a small portion of the overall market (see the attached article), increased market volatility and rising interest rates are bringing investor interest back to active. For now, mostly in bond products, but re: the attached article, international and emerging market products are […]