ETF Trading Report: Leisure Fund, China ETF In Focus - ETF News And Commentary
April 28 2012 - 7:47AM
Zacks
Despite a weak GDP report and concerns over Spain, U.S. equity
markets rose again in Friday trading. Investors seemed to focus in
on the positive earnings and shook off the poor economic data as
online retailer AMZN added more than 15% while tech giant Cisco
also helped rally stocks to close the week.
Overall, the Dow added about 0.2% on the day while the S&P
500 gained a similar amount. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq continued its
solid week on a great note, adding 0.6% in Friday’s session.
Currency markets again saw the dollar fall on the day, as the
U.S. dollar index finished below the $78.8 mark to close the week.
Meanwhile, bond markets were pretty much flat, as the 10 year
finished where it started at a yield of 1.94% (read Is The Bear
Market For Bond ETFs Finally Here?).
Commodity markets, however, followed their stock counterparts
higher pretty much across the board in Friday trading. WTI crude
added about 22 cents while natural gas surged 3.3% on the day.
Softs also rose on the day across a variety of products while both
the precious metals and industrial metals gained as well.
In ETF trading, investors saw a relatively light day of volume
in a variety of products. Commodity volume remained light while a
number of the bigger and more popular products failed to see much
interest in the final Friday of the month. Yet, with that being
said, investors did see some outsized activity in a couple products
including a few small cap ETFs, sector funds, and some of the
Asia-Pacific products.
In particular, ETF trading was heavy in the PowerShares
Dynamic Leisure and Entertainment Fund (PEJ). This product
usually sees volume of about 37,000 shares but saw a Friday spike
to close to 128,000 shares to close out the week.
Undoubtedly, this move was due to the slew of earnings reports
which hit the market after the bell on Thursday and before trading
on Friday. Of particular concern to investors in PEJ was probably
Starbucks (SBUX) the biggest component in the fund
(read Three Cyclical ETFs That Are Surging Higher).
The company finished the day about 5.3% lower as investors sold
off after the firm’s earnings report. Although the firm beat the
Zacks Consensus Estimate, weak numbers in the European segment
hammered sentiment in the security sending the stock down sharply
and boosting trading volumes.
Beyond this, the travel sector saw a huge boost from the Expedia
report although the security isn’t in the fund. Instead, exposure
is robust to hotel operators and other travel websites and these
may have been more active as a result of Expedia’s solid
release.
Another ETF that saw a huge spike in interest was the
Guggenheim China Small Cap ETF (HAO). This fund
usually sees trading of about 116,000 shares in a session while
today’s trading nearly reached the 745,000 mark (see What Bubble?
China ETFs Soaring To Start 2012).
This spike in volume could have been due to the recent data
releases that came from the country and the small caps’ role as
more focused on local events. Investors saw relatively positive
figures in the release of both the industrial profits YTD figure as
well as the MNI April Business Condition Survey.
This business survey rose well above expectations and may have
dispelled some worries over the health of the Chinese economy at
least for the time being. Thanks to this, HAO saw increased volume
although global economic worries helped to bring down the gains of
the fund to just a 0.3% move for Friday’s session.
(see more on ETFs at the Zacks ETF Center)
To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
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