Altavista Research

This year is barely more than four months old, but it is not a stretch to say investors are tired of hearing about the negative impact low interest rates are having on financial services stocks and the relevant exchange-traded funds. The Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE: XLF), the largest...

Thank goodness for the financial service sector. That is the only S&P 500 sector that has performed worse than healthcare this year. Fortunately for healthcare exchange traded funds, such as the Health Care SPDR (ETF) (NYSE: XLV), rival financial services funds have been notably worse. The...

Underscoring investors' affinity this year for lower risk sectors, the Utilities SPDR (ETF) (NYSE: XLU) is by far the best-performing sector SPDR exchange-traded fund with a gain of 11.3 percent. Further cementing the notion low beta is in style this year, the Consumer Staples Select Sect. SPDR...

Defensive sectors, such as consumer staples, have their advantages, namely solid dividend yields and a lack of volatility. However, that does not mean exchange-traded funds such as the popular Consumer Staples Select Sect. SPDR (ETF) (NYSE: XLP) are free lunches. Rather, the opposite is true, as...

Last year, the Health Care SPDR (ETF) (NYSE: XLV) gained 6.8 percent, which was good for the third-best performance among the nine legacy sector SPDR exchange-traded funds. XLV's 2015 showing, though off the pace set in previous years, was still sturdy when considering the punishment incurred...

Industrial stocks and exchange-traded funds have been duds. Over the past year, the Industrial Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE: XLI), the largest industrial ETF is down 9.3 percent, a loss that is more than double that of the S&P 500 over the same period. For the six-year period ending 2015, XLI...

For more than 17 years, exchange-traded funds investors and traders alike knew just nine sector SPDRs, but that changed in October with the debuts of Financial Services Select Sector SPDR Fund (The)(NYSE: XLFS) and Real Estate Select Sector SPDR Fund (The) (NYSE: XLRE). The New SPDRs State Street...

The Industrial Select Sector SPDR (Sector Spdr Trust Sbi (NYSE: XLI)), the largest industrial sector exchange-traded fund by assets, is off 2.6 percent this year, a performance that has XLI in fifth place among the nine sector SPDR ETFs. Another way of looking at that scenario: XLI is the best of...

Investors don't often associate the technology sector with value havens, but data suggest the Technology SPDR (ETF) (NYSE: XLK), the largest technology sector exchange-traded fund, has the makings of a credible value play. The $13.1 billion XLK has, somewhat quietly, gained 7.9 percent year-to-date...

Industrial stocks and corresponding exchange-traded funds have been laggards this year. The Industrial Select Sector SPDR (Sector Spdr Trust Sbi (NYSE: XLI)), the largest industrial ETF, is locked in a battled with the Select Sector Financial Slct Str SPDR Fd (NYSE: XLF) for the dubious honor of...

Shares of the Select Sector Financial Slct Str SPDR Fd (NYSE: XLF), the largest financial services exchange-traded fund, are trading lower by half a percent at this writing before this week's avalanche of major bank and brokerage earnings starts trickling with Dow component JPMorgan Chase...

The Health Care SPDR (ETF) (NYSE: XLV), the largest healthcare exchange-traded fund by assets, is off 9.3 percent over the past three months, a decline hastened in large part by the recent retrenchment in biotech stocks. In a credit to XLV's strength through the first half of the year, the...

AltaVista Research was founded in 2004, as a means of providing expanded research and coverage of the exchange-traded fund universe.  The firm takes a unique approach to analyzing fundamental aspects of ETFs that help financial advisors and sophisticated investors make portfolio management...