Financial, Bank ETFs For Earnings Season

Tom Lydon submits: ETF Spotlight on Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSEArca: XLF), part of an ongoing series. Assets: $7.3 billion. Objective: The ETF’s tracking index represents the financial sector of the S&P 500.

David Trainer submits:Investors in Financial Sector ETFs need to be very careful about which ETF they buy because there are simply not that many good stocks as compared to bad stocks in the sector. The Financial sector is one of 5 that gets our Neutral rating. 4 sectors get our Dangerous rating while only one gets an Attractive Rating.

By John Spence: Exchange traded funds tracking the financial sector were in the limelight Wednesday after Standard & Poor’s downgraded its ratings on a half-dozen major U.S. banks. Meanwhile, key component Bank of America (BAC) was in danger of seeing its shares fall below $5, which could trigger additional selling from institutional investors.

By SA Editor Miriam Metzinger: Stocks discussed on the in-depth session of Jim Cramer's Mad Money TV Program, Tuesday April 16.

Tom Lydon submits: By John Spence Bank exchange traded funds have moved lower following quarterly results from the big lenders and could continue to underperform the market, analysts say.

By Tom Lydon: Triple-digit stock prices can limit the amount of exposure an investor would like when constructing a well-rounded portfolio. However, with exchange traded funds, investors can take on a basket of expensive, yet favorably positioned large-cap companies.

By Kim Klaiman:NYSE Euronext U.S. Options Exchanges announced on November 12, 2012 that they are expanding the listing and trading of their Short Term Option Series program from a single week to five consecutive weeks. The initial list of the underlying vehicles approved for the new program included the following stocks and ETFs:

Roger Nusbaum submits: An in-depth investigation at one of the stock market television networks has uncovered that some ETFs have large weightings in individual stocks, which at times can be problematic for fund holders. It turns out that investors should look at what these ETFs actually own.