Monthly Archives: July 2009

According to a July 27, 2009 Economic Report posted on MarketWatch, June's new home sales rose by a stronger than expected 11% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 384,000. This represented the largest amount since November 2008. Furthermore, inventories of unsold homes fell 4.1% in the month June. The adage that real estate is all about location, location, location seems to still be relevant during this particular housing market recovery period. For example, the report also showed that sales rose over 29% in the Northeast, increased over 43% in the Midwest and climbed over 22% in the West while falling over 5% in the South. The overall improvement in sales is an encouraging sign that the housing market may finally be stabilizing.Read more

Inverse exchange-traded funds ("ETFs") and exchange-traded notes ("ETNs"), both flat and leveraged, have been the subject of a lot of debate these days. I believe that a lot of the confusion and concern stems from a basic need for the industry as a whole to do a better job of educating the investing public about the rapidly evolving market of exchange-traded products. For example, the inverse products themselves may or may not be appropriate for long term investors because of their daily valuation mechanism. Inverse products essentially reset every day which is why buy-and-hold type investors are dismayed that the returns of the inverse ETFs and ETNs often vary significantly from what would be expected given the performance of the underlying index.Read more