October Recap
Edition #017 - Data recap of last week's big moves inside the Tech ETF landscape. See what to keep an eye on for the week ahead.
With October coming to a close, Tech ETFs finished on average another 3.35% down, closing out their third negative week in a row. The cautiousness around the state of the market that I first brought up in this newsletter towards the end of August still remains; the US elections tomorrow only seem to add to some of this volatility.
The top 3 ETFs over the October period were all levered ETFs, with $TECS taking out the number 1 spot for the second consecutive month. That said, the ETF still lags coming in at 106/107 based on YTD returns.
$CWEB the only levered bull in the top 5 managed to bounce back after a tough September where it was the second worst performing ETF of that month. This was less surprising considering it has now moved back into the 3rd spot based on YTD returns.
$LEND and $LIT are at opposite ends of the YTD rankings with $LEND also lagging at the bottom (105/107) while $LIT has had a stronger second half of the year and currently sits in 9th spot overall.
The strength of China continued to rebound in October with $CQQQ outperforming its North American counterpart $QQQ which finished October in 89th spot with a -5% return on the month. After two negative months $QQQ sits in 38th spot YTD, 14 places behind $CQQQ in 24th.
Meanwhile, both $LOUP and $SOCL rounded out a strong October somewhat thanks to $PINS (Pinterest which gained 34% through the month and helped rally other social media stocks, including $SNAP and $TWTR (albeit somewhat temporarily).
After a very strong start to the year, the 4 ARK ETFS which we track in this cohort all seemed to cool off.
$ARKW maintains the number 1 spot for the year at 88% YTD.
$ARKK in second and $ARKF in 5th.
Keeping in mind the top non-levered Tech ETF from 2019 was $XSD (SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF) which returned 62% through the year. I’ll be very curious as to see how much the ARK funds have left to gain in 2020.
Inside the gaming category, we saw some similar movements of the three ETFs. Despite a slightly stronger October, $GAMR still lags the other two ETFs by about 25%, placing it in the 17th spot YTD, with $ESPO in 8th and $HERO holding a steady 8th.
On the bottom end of the month we see $AWAY (ETFMG Travel Tech), which listed in February of this year (talk about timing) and is currently down 30% YTD.
Despite the UK moving back into lockdown, this one may be interesting to watch as potential more vaccine news comes to (or is at least clarified) in the US over the next couple of weeks.
I hope you enjoyed this edition of FinLister and hopefully November fares a bit better for Tech ETFs than the last two months but only time will tell.
Thanks again for reading, and see you all next week.
Stuart
Great issue, I didn’t know Pinterest was up 38%, and wow ARKW holding 1st at 88% is an astounding number.