Here is a comprehensive list of all the exchange-traded funds — all 1,500 of them! It’s the most complete list of ETF’s that I’m aware of.
The list includes all the popular fund families, such as
- State Street (SPDR, including SPY, which tracks the well-known S&P 500 index)
- PowerShares (including QQQQ, which tracks the Nasdaq-100 index)
- Barclays (iPath / iShares, including IWM, which tracks the Russell 2000 index)
- Vanguard (many of their mutual funds have equivalent exchange-traded funds, including VTI, which aims to track the total US stock market)
- Allianz (PIMCO bond funds)
- Rydex (CurrencyShares, leveraged and inverse funds)
- ProShares (leveraged and inverse funds)
- … and well as many lesser-known funds (Aberdeen, Alpine, Altman, etc., etc. etc.)
By the way, our ETF newsletter follows all of these funds with the exception of Merril Lynch’s HOLDRS. The only reason that we don’t follow HOLDRS is because of historical data quality issues.
Retail (XRT), which we recommended a couple of weeks ago, has had excellent gains. For example, our Balanced allocation is up 7.8% in just two weeks.
However, as of now, retail appears to be overbought. Of all the funds that we are tracking, the one with the best potential at this point appears to be a consumer goods fund. We are thus recommending it in our current newsletter.
Both smallcap and retail stocks, which we recommended last week, have had a great few days. IJR (iShares S&P SmallCap 600 Index) is up 5.66%, while our retail stocks recommendation is up 5.14%. At this point, we see smallcap as being overbought, and so we are getting out of them. Retail stocks could be close to being overbought, but we are still holding on. In our Balanced allocation, we are putting some money into corporate bonds, while in our Conservative allocation, we are holding most of the money in cash.
Question: Does it really matters if we keep switching between funds if we are dollar-averaging??
My TSP allocation has been 50% C, 25% S and 25%G and the performance shows YTD -10%.
Response: I am not sure I understand your question completely. If you switch from funds that are doing poorly to funds that are doing well, or the other way around, then that’s certainly going to change your return.
A lot of people are confused about dollar cost averaging (DCA). There is nothing magical about DCA. DCA does not turn bad investments into profitable ones.
When calculating return from investing a lump sum, all that matters is the initial price and the final price. With DCA, what matters is the final price as well as the path that the price took from the initial price to the final price. Because of this, knowing the return from investing a lump sum does not tell you anything about the return from dollar cost averaging. Either return could be higher than the other. It depends.
Just as a note, my newsletter’s YTD return is about +2%. Also see our verified returns.
We are switching to the S Fund (“Extended market”), which tracks midcap and smallcap stocks. Mid and smallcap stocks appear to be recovering faster than the large stocks, which are tracked by the C Fund.
This recommendation is consistent with the recommendations we’ve been making in our ETF newsletter. In that newsletter, we’ve been in midcap stocks since last week; we’re switching to smallcap stocks this week.
We are getting out of midcap stocks and getting into smallcap. Though both have had similar performance, we feel that, at this point, smallcap stocks have greater potential. Though neither has moved this past week, they still look strong nonetheless. In addition, we are also recommending retail stocks. Right now, they are a little riskier than smallcap stocks, but they also have a higher expected return.
We are recommending midcap stocks. We see them as being low risk right now, and as having a high return potential. They have been very strong over the past month, easily outperforming the general stock market.
We pick the mix of investments that maximizes the expected return while not exceeding a fixed maximum risk.
In this issue, I wanted to continue recommending the Lifecycle 2010 fund. However, for the benefit of our readers who are not TSP participants, we are instead recommending the equivalent mix of Individual funds.
We are recommending value stocks, since they are beginning to take off. Utilities, which have a lower risk right now, are also doing well. That’s why we are recommending a combination of utilities and value stocks in our Conservative allocation.
