Exchange Traded Funds

If you have ever wondered what an ETF is, you'd get a better definitions by asking the SEC and not a blog: http://www.sec.gov/answers/etf.htm

Basically, ETFs seek to achieve the same return of a particular index fund without investing in all securities within that fund. The question then is, can ETFs do this? In a well managed fund, the answer appears to be yes. However, this performance comes at a cost of additional shareholder fees or annual operating expenses. Basically these expenses cover the cost of the ETF's manager's time and exchange costs.

Since ETFs seek to achieve the performance of an index fund at a fraction of the cost of owning 1 share of each company in the fund, ETFs are by nature more volatile than the index fund. This can translate to riskier, but the nature of the risk depends on how well the ETF managers do their jobs. So, to manage the risk to reward ratio, one would to well to read and understand the ETF's prospectus of interest.

The last ETFs to generate buy signals were at the end of day 8/16/2007:

EEM, ISHARES MSCI E.M. (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
EWZ, ISHARE MSCI BRAZI (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
FXI, ISHARES TR FTSE I (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
VWO, VANGRD EMRG MKT E (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)


If one can accept a higher risk, it's always more profitable to invest in a single stock that performs the best. However, it's difficult to find the "one" stock each day. Hopefully the one to perform well in the future will be on today's scan, which I've added a long term pick criteria. When a stocks 20 day SMA has been declining for at least 50 days in the past quarter, and the 5 day SMA is increasing, and the stocks open is below the 20 day SMA, and the stocks close is above it, and the stocks open is equal to the day low, that's a signal. Todays list:

ACP, AMER REAL ESTATE (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
ANL, AMER LAND LEASE (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
ATX, CROSS A T CO (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
BLW, BLACKROCK LTD DUR (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
CYAN, CYANOTECH CORP (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
DSCO, DISCOVERY LABS IN (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
ECHO, ELECTRONIC CLEARI (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
FCF, FIRST COMMONWLTH (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
FPFC, FIRST PLACE FINL (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
HGIC, HARLEYSVILLE GRP (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
HOG, HARLEY DAVIDSON (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
JOUT, JOHNSON OUTDOORS (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
LAZ, LAZARD LTD. (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
NMTI, NMT MEDICAL INC (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
NWLIA, NATL WESTERN LIFE (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
PFB, PFF BANCORP INC (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
PHK, PIMCO HIGH INCOME (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
RGDX, RESPONSE GENETICS (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
SHBI, SHORE BANCSHARES (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
SNPS, SYNOPSYS INC (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
SYM, SYMS CP (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)
TOMO, TOM ONLINE INC. (Google Yahoo Earnings Chart)

Of these, BLW, DSCO, HOG, LAZ, NMTI, PHK, SNPS are long term picks, meaning there values are likely to increase over a month or more.