Stock Indices: Are They Built to be a Good Investment?” 0 (0)

<p>Fun fact! What is the plural form of an index?</p><p><a target=“_blank“ href=“https://xpoken.com/“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>Indices or indexes</a>? </p><p>It is both acceptable. But, the word „<a target=“_blank“ href=“https://xpoken.com/signup“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>indices</a>“
has historically been used more frequently. Even if the use of the Americanized
plural „indexes“ has grown over time, it still seems far less common
than „indices“ around the world. Yet, according to Google Trends,
„indices“ is the most popular search word worldwide.</p><p>Now let’s discuss what a stock index or equity index is</p><p>Equities are grouped and priced to a base value at a particular
date to create equity indexes, which are an aggregate of statistical
importance. An equity index is a collection of securities that have been put
together to provide insight into price growth or total return over a given time
frame.</p><p>A fund applies the exact weighting mechanism on its stocks
because index funds are designed to follow a particular index.</p><p>The majority of the significant market indices are weighted by
market capitalization. Many fund companies have begun offering alternative
weighted index funds in recent years. But a price-weighted index was the
catalyst for everything.</p><p>Four Methodologies and their Pros & Cons</p><p>Stock indices or Equity Indices have Four Approaches.</p><p>The most popular methodology, known as the „market
value“ or „capitalization-weighted“ index (MWI), is based
on the size of each company. These refer to the terms large, mid, and small-cap
stocks. It is the standard way of determining a company’s size. </p><p>Most leading indices, including the S&P 500, uses the market
cap weighting method.</p><p>Pros</p><p>They ought to be more fully represented when evaluating the
market’s performance. That is accurate.</p><p>Cons</p><p>As a method of investing, it is absurd. An investor would
purchase more of a stock as its price increases and sell the stock as its price
decreases, according to a market-cap-weighted index. </p><p>Price Weighted Index</p><p>It’s the oldest and least used index approach, based on the
price average of the underlying stock. A stock with a higher price is given more
weight in the index. </p><p>Pros</p><p>The simplicity of calculation is the only benefit.</p><p>Cons</p><p>The main criticism of a price-weighted approach is that it
focuses too much on share price regardless of underlying factors. Additionally,
the cost indicates what a buyer is willing to pay. It makes no mention of the
index’s stocks‘ overall performance. It is seldom used because of this.</p><p>Equal Weighted Index</p><p>This is the first of two alternate weightings employed in
smart-beta funds. Because each stock is equally important regardless of its
fundamentals, market capitalization, or price, said, each stock in the index is
weighted equally. In exchange, each stock equally influences the index’s
performance.</p><p>Pros</p><p>It reduces the focus on market capitalization. Therefore, the index
fund is not compelled to sell more undervalued companies and buy more
overvalued equities. Equal-weighted index funds reduce it somewhat, but only
partially. Due to the identical weighting of each stock, it just tends to be
more unpredictable.</p><p>Cons</p><p>High turnover is a result of price adjustments. In maintaining
an equal balance, shares are continuously acquired and traded. This increases
the fund’s expense ratio and may also increase your tax liabilities.</p><p>Fundamentally-Weighted Index</p><p>A fundamentally weighted index emphasizes one or more variables,
such as sales, book value, dividends, cash flow, or earnings. Stocks that fit
those criteria are given more weight in the index.</p><p>Pros</p><p>The emphasis on performance factors is its advantage. This
eliminates the equal weighing and backward approach randomness that a market
cap weighting provides. </p><p>Cons</p><p>Higher costs become a concern in this index. But, more
importantly, any fundamentally weighted index fund needs enough investors to
use the exact strategy. </p><p>RUN-THROUGH</p><p>You can anticipate that other fund families will join if
equal-weighted or alternative-weighted funds become increasingly popular. The
potential may create some excellent opportunities for sector-specific funds.
You can find a different weighting system that matches your investment
philosophy with more research.</p>

This article was written by ForexLive at www.forexlive.com.

Go to Forexlive

DOW JONES Technical Analysis 0 (0)

<p class=“MsoNormal“>We finally got past the <a target=“_blank“ href=“https://www.forexlive.com/centralbank/federal-reserve-hikes-50-basis-points-as-expected-20221214/“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>FOMC
Policy Decision</a> and saw some weakness in the market creeping in
afterwards. The overall event was more hawkish than expected on two fronts. The
<a target=“_blank“ href=“https://www.forexlive.com/centralbank/fomc-dot-plot-and-central-tendencies-from-dec-2022-meeting-eoy-2023-48-20221214/“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>Dot
Plot</a>, showing the peak rate, was revised to 5.1%, which is a bit higher than
the market expectations at the time of the event but more or less in line with
peak rate expectations in the past weeks/months. </p><p class=“MsoNormal“>The more hawkish stuff here is
that the majority of members saw rates peak at or above the 5% level, which
shows an unanimity among members, and the rate is expected to be cut to 4.1% in
2024, which is higher than previously indicated and shows a willing to stay
“higher for longer”. </p><p class=“MsoNormal“>The second more hawkish part came
from the <a target=“_blank“ href=“https://www.forexlive.com/centralbank/powell-opening-statement-we-have-more-work-to-do-20221214/“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>Fed
Chair Powell press conference</a> where he pushed back against
bets that the Fed would reverse course next year and that they will “stay the
course until the job is done” to avoid the mistakes of the 1970s when the Fed
prematurely eased monetary policy and had to fight with repeated inflationary waves.
</p><p class=“MsoNormal“>The Fed also keeps on repeating
that the <a target=“_blank“ href=“https://www.forexlive.com/news/us-november-non-farm-payrolls-263k-vs-200k-expected-20221202/“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>labour
market</a> is extremely tight. They probably won’t have conviction in lowering
interest rates until they see unemployment to pick up. Even though inflation
data may continue on showing relief, the Fed clearly wants to see the labour
market to show weakness as well. </p><p class=“MsoNormal“>To achieve this, they need a
proper recession and that’s what the bond market may be seeing. For the stock
market, on the other hand, it’s not good news as a possible overtightening from
the Fed and a serious recession are two of the worst scenarios. </p><p class=“MsoNormal“>DOW JONES Technical Analysis</p><p class=“MsoCaption“>Recent two weeks of price action and catalysts on the Dow
Jones on tradingview.com</p><p class=“MsoNormal“>On the technical side as you can
see in the chart above, the price has been chopping around for the last 2 weeks
as tier one economic data increased the fear of a possible surprise in the <a target=“_blank“ href=“https://www.forexlive.com/news/us-november-cpi-71-yy-vs-73-expected-20221213/“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>CPI
report</a>, which in the end missed expectations. The market erred anyway on the
defensive side going into the FOMC meeting and got served a more hawkish than expected
event. The price now is compressed between an upward trendline and a strong
resistance.</p><p class=“MsoNormal“>Looking at the daily chart below
we can see that the 35192-35412 blue zone is a pretty strong resistance. The
price couldn’t break that area and got immediately rejected after the spike
from the CPI report. We can also see that there’s a <a target=“_blank“ href=“https://www.forexlive.com/Education/technical-analysis-understanding-divergence-20220429/“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>bearish
divergence</a> between the price and the <a target=“_blank“ href=“https://www.forexlive.com/Education/technical-analysis-understanding-relative-strength-index-rsi-20220426/“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>RSI</a>. This signals a weakening
momentum right at the resistance, which points more to the downside than the
upside. Will this FOMC event mark the top in the Dow Jones? </p><p class=“MsoCaption“>Daily chart of the Dow Jones on tradingview.com</p><p class=“MsoNormal“>We will see. As of now, the
levels to watch are the blue zone <a target=“_blank“ href=“https://www.forexlive.com/Education/technical-analysis-support-and-resistance-20220405/“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>resistance</a> and the blue upward <a target=“_blank“ href=“https://www.forexlive.com/Education/technical-analysis-trendlines-20220406/“ target=“_blank“ rel=“follow“>trendline</a>. If the price breaks up, we may
see the Dow Jones climb to the all-time-high at the 36832 level. If the price
breaks down, we should see the price reaching the first target at 31761 and a
further break below may lead to the low at 28660.</p>

This article was written by ForexLive at www.forexlive.com.

Go to Forexlive