Top Currencies VS. Gold In 2020: This "Rookie" Rocks!

Posted on by Aibek Burabayev

The time has come to see if any top currency could rival gold, which established the new all-time-high this year in this traditional yearly post.

Seven currencies represent the fiat money: U.S. dollar (USD) and six components of the U.S. dollar index (DXY) placed by weight: Euro (EUR), Japanese yen (JPY), British pound (GBP), Canadian dollar (CAD), Swedish krona (SEK) and the Swiss franc (CHF). Bitcoin (BITSTAMPUSD) is also here to represent the hyped crypto-world.

Before we jump to the results of 2020, let us see below how you predicted the future back at the end of December 2019.

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The majority of you bet that the "rookie" Bitcoin would beat all others, including the regular favorite U.S. dollar in 2020. The latter was the second choice a year ago. The third pick was interesting as it was the British pound, which was not in the shortlist of your bets before, but it managed to rank #3 last year.

Let us look at the diagram below to find out the results. Continue reading "Top Currencies VS. Gold In 2020: This "Rookie" Rocks!" →

The Fed Warms To Climate Change

Posted on by George Yacik

The politicization of the Federal Reserve continues apace. And no, President Trump isn’t trying to pull some grand last-minute gesture before he leaves office, like trying to fire Jerome Powell or something like that.

Last week, as expected, the Federal Reserve formally joined the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System, the “lone holdout” among the world’s major central banks to join this “forum for central bankers and regulators to come together and discuss how their institutions can ensure their financial systems don’t worsen climate change risks, and how financial institutions might be able to lower those risks,” as the Wall Street Journal described it.

As innocuous as that may sound, it injects the Fed solidly in the middle of what has become increasingly political, namely which companies – and probably, individuals eventually– banks should or shouldn’t lend money or offer their services to.

As we know, several large international banks have been under increasing pressure from shareholder activists to stop making loans to companies in the “fossil fuels” business, namely oil and coal companies and pipeline operators, and the like. And the banks have dutifully buckled under, albeit with a long lead time as to when they will actually cease doing so. Now the Fed will be providing added pressure on the banks to make loans only to those companies favored by the Washington and New York elites – or at least will feel added pressure to do so. Continue reading "The Fed Warms To Climate Change" →

Merry Christmas From INO.com

Posted on by The INO.com Team

This has been a hard year for many around the globe, but now more than ever, we hope you find yourself surrounded by love. The INO.com staff is very appreciative of your interest, and we love having you return to our blog time and time again.

Merry Christmas to you, and we are excited to help you build your financial goals and trading confidence in 2021.

If you don't celebrate Christmas, please accept our most genuine wishes for a happy holiday and a prosperous new year!

Don't forget to help your favorite organization this holiday season by leaving a comment on our donation post.

Best,
The INO.com Team


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Tech Stocks - A "Win-Win-Win"?

Posted on by Noah Kiedrowski

Tech stocks seem to be eerily appropriate for the famous “win-win-win” term coined by Michael Scott on the sitcom The Office. Tech stocks are in the sweet spot and continue to appreciate regardless of the COVID-19 backdrop and feed into every industry in today’s economy. Whether COVID-19 is on the rise or on the decline, technology underpins the stay-at-home economy and the so-called back to a normal economy. And now more than ever, technology serves an integral part of every slice of the economy that these stocks have remained strong despite the massive rotation into value stocks. Whether the COVID-19 backdrop is good, bad, or the market is pricing-in putting the pandemic behind us, the technology sector is in a “win-win-win” situation. Considering many of these names have traded sideways since their September highs and significantly off their 52-week highs, these large-cap tech companies may be worth a look in this frothy market. Stocks such as Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Alibaba (BABA), Facebook (FB), and Google (GOOGL) fit his profile.

The Value Rotation and Stagnant Technology

The market has witnessed a massive sea change as the prospects of a large-scale vaccination program in the US coming to fruition. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 have rallied to all-time highs while recovery and value names have recaptured much of their lost market capitalization due to COVID-19. Meanwhile, many technology stocks that powered the market higher in the initial stages of this post-COVID-19 rally have stalled out. Once the value rotation began, many high-quality technology names fell from their highs and have traded sideways since their highs back in September (Figure 1). Continue reading "Tech Stocks - A "Win-Win-Win"?" →

ARK Investments ETFs Have Been Top Performers

Posted on by Matt Thalman

After a historic November, the best month the market has seen since January 1987, I found an interesting Exchange Traded Fund trend; one ETF manager has three of the top ten best performing ETFs of 2020. Furthermore, what makes this one fund manager even more impressive is this performance when you run the screener and leave leveraged funds in play, even though none of the ARK Invest funds are leveraged products themselves.

So not only are these three funds not leveraged and therefore exposing you to more risk than you may want, but they are beating other leveraged funds. One of the main ways ARK is likely to show excellent results in 2020 is its different way of thinking about investing. They state on their website this belief.

"Not Your Traditional Investment Manager

The world is changing rapidly. While traditional investors seek safety in benchmarks and passive strategies, ARK believes this behavior is counterproductive. Innovation is causing disruption and the risks associated with the traditional world order are rising. We strive to invest at the pace of innovation"

The fund managers certainly see themselves as a little different than others on Wall Street, and this year has undoubtedly proven what they are doing is beating the rest of the pack.

So, how great was the performance of Ark's fund thus far? Continue reading "ARK Investments ETFs Have Been Top Performers" →