The year 2019 is all about green returns for the broader market. A dovish Fed and cues of improvement in the strained U.S.-China trade relation mainly led to this development. SPDR S&P 500 ETF (up 12.5%),SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (up 10.4%), Invesco QQQ Trust (up 14.6%) and all-world ETF iShares MSCI ACWI ETF (up 11.4%), all showered investors with smart gains.
Let’s take a look at a few ETFs, which have been greener in the year-to-date frame on the festive occasion of St. Patrick’s Day. These funds also have strength for further bull run.
ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF — Up 47.6%
Marijuana ETF is gathering steam highly this year owing to its growing acceptance in almost every sphere of life. Be it medical, food and beverage or cosmetics, marijuana is making its presence felt all over. Mergers and acquisitions have been rampant in the space, both across Canada and the United States.
The legalization in Canada seems to be largely priced-in at the current level. Investors’ interest has been veering toward the United States where the industry is still in its nascent stage. We thus believe, the green rush is here to stay with many more developments coming up.
Renaissance IPO ETF — Up 31.3%
Expectations are high that IPOs will stage a great show in 2019. Biotech IPOs are typically trending right now. Then there are bigger names like Uber Technologies Inc.’s planned listing. According to several sources, Lyft plans to list its stock on the Nasdaq by March-end while Uber may make its debut in April. This euphoria can be tapped via Renaissance IPO ETF.
Virtus LifeSci Biotech Products ETF — Up 29.2%
This time, biotech stocks have seen their best-ever start to a year since 2012. A solid merger-and-acquisition momentum has been instrumental to this rally. Speculations are rife about increasing consolidation in the cancer space. While researches and approvals have been solid in the oncology domain, other areas have also held strong.
This Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) fund follows LifeSci Biotechnology Products Index, designed to measure the biotechnology companies’ performance with a primary product offering or product candidate that has received the Food and Drug Administration approval.
ProShares Online Retail ETF – Up 25.8%
In a prospering economy, marked with solid consumer confidence and a decent number of jobs, the retail sector will keep going. And among the whole chunk, online activities are promising ones. In the shutdown-trodden January too, online and mail-order retail sales rose 2.6%, reflecting the biggest gain since December 2017. So, one can keep a tab on the fund ONLN, which looks to follow retailers that principally sell online or through other non-store channels.
Xtrackers MSCI China A Inclusion Equity ETF — Up 24.1%
Though China’s economy is slowing, due to trade tensions with the United States, waning domestic demand and terrifying off-balance-sheet debt by local governments, solid efforts are being made to fix the issues.
The Chinese government announced a cut in the value-added tax (VAT) for the manufacturing, transport and construction sectors. Things are looking better on the trade front this year as Trump postponed the increase in tariffs on $200-billion Chinese goods, which was scheduled this month.
In the past year, China slashed commercial lenders’ reserve requirement ratio (RRR) five times to make borrowing easier. There was a bullish sentiment on the equity front as well. MSCI is on its way to quadruple the weighting of Chinese A-shares from the current 5% to 20% for a number of its indexes.
The underlying MSCI China A Inclusion Index is designed to track the progressive partial inclusion of A shares in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index over time. The fund has a Zacks Rank of 2.
