Investors saw a rocky start to Friday trading, but this
eventually gave way to a solid ending as hope for a Spanish bailout
over the weekend spurred buying. This led to the best week so far
in 2012 for the major indexes across the board, erasing some of the
losses that investors have seen in weeks past.
Overall, the Dow and the S&P 500 both added about 0.8% while
the Nasdaq gained nearly 1% on the session. Gains were led by those
in the banking and staples sector, although green was pretty much
across the board. Seemingly the only sector with any trouble was
the basic materials segment, although restaurants were weak after a
bad report from leader MCD.
In currency markets, the dollar strengthen marginally against
the world's currencies with the dollar index adding about 0.20 on
the day. Meanwhile, Treasury bonds saw inflows to start the day but
these gains were soon erased and most securities finished the day
yielding about the same as their beginning of day levels (see
11 Great Dividend ETFs
).
Commodity markets were also mixed as no real trend developed in
the space. Oil and gold were down while softs were across the board
once again; cotton and wheat were down, while sugar and corn
finished in the green.
In ETF trading, volume was light across the board with many of
the most popular equity products seeing lower-than-average trading
levels. However, commodity trading levels were slightly above
average while some interest was seen in the sector leverage space
as well.
In particular, investors saw outsized activity in the leveraged
consumer ETF space as represented by
UCC
and
UGE
. These products which target, respectively, consumer services and
consumer goods on a daily leveraged basis, both saw more than 2.5
times their normal trading volume levels (read
Understanding Leveraged ETFs
).
Interestingly, in both products volume was non-existent for much
of the day until a few large blocks in the final 80 minutes of
trading. Possibly a single trader or group of traders sought to
make a concentrated bet on the broad consumer sector heading into
the close, implying that at least someone is looking for a bullish
start to the week in this space.
Beyond these funds, investors also saw outsized interest in the
session with the
Market Vectors Bank and Brokerage ETF (
RKH
)
. This product usually sees volume of about 27,000 shares but
experienced a spike to over 107,000 during Friday trading (see
Three Financial ETFs Outperforming XLF
).
Surprisingly, this came despite low levels of volume in the rest
of the financial sector; many of the top products including XLF
didn't even see volume that hit their daily average. Instead, it
appears as though a few traders sought to get concentrated exposure
to this corner of the market during the mid-day period. At this
time, a few block trades accounted for nearly all of the day's
volume before the close of the week.
(see more in the
Zacks
ETF Center
)
MKT VEC-BANK&BR (RKH): ETF Research Reports
PRO-ULT CONS SV (UCC): ETF Research Reports
PRO-ULT CONS GD (UGE): ETF Research Reports
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