ETF Global Update

Carl T. Delfeld submits: All the major U.S. indexes finished higher for this week. The Dow Jones average finished up 3.6% for the week, Nasdaq gained 0.7%,while the S&P 500 ended up 1.7%. Europe ETFs as a group ended the week up by about almost 4%; Asia was up by about 1% and Latin America ended the week higher by about 0.5%. The strongest sector this week was retail ETFs, up by 7%, and oil ETFs finishing down about 10%. Ben Bernanke offered little comfort to dollar bulls this week when he stressed that soothing the financial system was his “top priority”. This and some solid earnings from Wells Fargo sparked a sharp rally in U.S. markets (SPY) and global financials (IXG). Wall Street retreated early Friday after disappointing results from technology companies like Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) and higher oil prices offset a more upbeat report from Citigroup (C). Merrill Lynch (MER) reported another ugly quarter and has now lost a total of almost $19bn over four straight bad quarters.Complete Story »