1 2 Many investors find the cost and convenience of ETF investing the best way to manage their money. One of the advantages of ETF is the fact that they can be traded or have conditional orders placed to help manage risk. Many ETFs have a robust option market with plenty of liquidity. However, many ETFs are dominated with many of the same stocks or other holdings. Here are five ETFs that can be used to provide diversification, income, and opportunity for appreciation.Growth & Income ETF #1: Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (NASDAQ: VXUS) VXUS is a passively managed foreign large...

After the large drop in silver on August 11, the price has been tentatively moving higher. Tuesday was no exception as the price gapped on the open and faded back into the previous day’s range. While the movement looks to consolidate gains, the timing of a potential bullish breakout is difficult to predict. The options market on the iShares Silver Trust ETF (NYSEARCA: SLV) saw some rather bullish trading being made as the implied volatility prices another big breakout higher by the fall. Price movement becomes parabolic when the angle of the advance steepens dramatically, and the volume...

It was 2013 and billionaire investors and rivals Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn began to get into it over Herbalife Nutrition Ltd (NYSE: HLF). Icahn has largely been a buyer of HLF since Ackman announced his sizable short position. With his last and only other sale coming near the 2018 peak, he’s back to selling again and is liquidating an even larger amount of his holdings this time. This may be the strongest signal since 2013 to sell Herbalife. If you were watching financial media at all in 2013 you heard about the airing of grievances by Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman. Icahn ripped Ackman pu...

1 2 It is a difficult environment for investors that need income when interest rates are scraping the bottom of the barrel. With the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield at 0.669%, the ability to generate a consistent return with little to no risk doesn’t exist. It’s pushing income investors into taking more risk to generate the needed return. The following four real estate investment trusts (REITs) are quality businesses that pay over a 4% dividend yield. If you’re an investor in need of income or a pension fund in need of paying retirees, the current environment is clearly hostile for consis...

I don’t know if you’re a fan of the show “Love It or List It” but insiders and investors have to make this decision all of the time with their shares. Do you “love it” enough to hold the shares or do you “list it” by selling the shares. With the shares of Zillow Group (NASDAQ: Z) continuing to run to all-time highs over the past couple months, insiders have been listing their shares in a big way. According to the Zillow Weekly Market Report, home sales are occurring at a blistering pace with pending home sales increasing 16.9% year-over-year. Homes are going under contract 11 days faste...

1 2 For the past two weeks, small cap value names have outperformed the S&P 500. To illustrate this, you can take the iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF (NYSEARCA: IWN) and divide it by the S&P 500 index on a weekly chart. While the outperformance wasn’t dramatic, it is part of a bottoming process that has been building since late March. Looking forward, the potential for this class of companies could be huge and here are five names that may lead the way. A value stock is a company that is trading at a discount to what it is perceived to be worth. Some investors will take a discou...

It’s been a comedy of errors for Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) as the company has had a hard time keeping up with production deadlines and developing small chips that can be used in ever-smaller devices in the Internet of things (IoT) age. The loss of Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) and the price surge in Advanced Micro Devices, Inc (NASDAQ: AMD) is only a reminder of management’s failure, but the current price is beginning to attract bullish option interest that is pointing to higher prices. In the company’s most recent earnings release they discussed the progress of the company’s 7nm CPU:...

It was a little over a week ago when Berkshire Hathaway bought its most recent tranche of 13.5 million shares of Bank of America Corp (NYSE: BAC). Since the buying began on July 22, option traders appear to have been following the buying with bullish option interest. That interest has dovetailed with a steepening yield curve and talks in Congress over stimulus spending. On Friday, the interest began to build again as the price looks to have found some support near $26. Over the past few weeks, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has been buying a lot more shares of Bank of America. Sinc...

It can be hard to know which period to start with and what is the most important criteria to evaluate for potential insider selling candidates. A good approach to take is to find the most sold stocks for a particular week and then dig in. The S&P 500 is a good place to start for opportunities since they are typically large company and are actively traded. Looking back at last week, Fortive Corp (NYSE: FTV) came in second as the most-sold stock on the S&P 500 in terms of trade value. Fortive manufactures professional instrumentation and develops software to be used in testing, ca...

1 2 Earnings season is a potential volatile time for the market as companies report data that is unknown to investors. As this quarter’s earnings season comes to a close, it’s important to look at the scorecard and evaluate future expected earnings. With less than 10% of the S&P 500 left to report, 79.6% have beaten EPS estimates and 62.6% have beaten revenue estimates. As we start a new week, here’s 10 names that are set to announce with their earnings expectations as well as their expected price movement. Despite the major market indices either at or near all-time highs, we’re i...