Bonds

There may not be a cure for the summertime blues, but the exchange-traded funds industry is making things interesting with a spate of new product launches. Dispelling the notion that July is a slow, uneventful time on Wall Street, new ETF launches topped double digits last week. Many of these new...

The smart beta phenomenon is starting to make its way to the world of the fixed income exchange traded funds just as bond ETFs are packing on billions of dollars in new assets. In fact, bond ETFs gathered $70 billion in the first half of 2017, putting the asset class well ahead of the record pace...

BlackRock Inc. (NYSE: BLK), parent company of iShares, the world's largest issuer of exchange-traded funds, bolstered its fixed-income footprint Thursday with the debut of four new bond funds. Two of those new products are smart beta funds while the other pair focus on environmental, social and...

Tuesday July 11: Five things the markets are talking about Capital markets continue to watch for cues on monetary policy. Questions on the U.S inflation outlook are certain to be front and center for Fed head Janet Yellen tomorrow – she is due to testify on the semi-annual Monetary Policy...

U.S. job growth got back on track in June, with a solid tally washing away the bad taste left by a weak May report. June payrolls jumped 222,000, the government said, easily surpassing Wall Street analysts’ consensus expectations for just around 170,000. Growth was strong through a number of...

Since the start of 2017, there’s been more price volatility among companies in the financial sector. Despite the roller-coaster ride in some of these stocks, the S&P 500 Financial Select Sector Index (IXM) is still outperforming the S&P 500 (SPX) over the past year, up just under 33%...

Geopolitics charged back toward center court early Thursday as market participants eyed developments in North Korea. Tensions rose after North Korea launched a missile several days ago, and stocks fell in pre-market trading as overseas markets came under pressure. President Trump is in Europe...

Oil is one of this year's worst-performing commodities, a theme that has a tendency to pressure high-yield corporate bonds because the U.S. junk bond market is littered with issues from energy companies. However, the VanEck Vectors Fallen Angel High Yield Bond ETF (NYSE: ANGL) has been mostly...

Many equity investors aren't big fans of holding bonds in their portfolio since some high-growth dividend stocks offer an equally attractive dividend yield with the added potential for upside in the stock. But they may be making a mistake in doing so, CNBC's Jim Cramer argued during his...

Wednesday July 5: Five things the markets are talking about Capital markets, thus far, have ridden out the latest rise in tensions around North Korea this week. Expect this temporary timeout to continue as investors' attention now shifts to today's FOMC minutes (02:00pm EST) from their June...

The Fed steps up to the plate Wednesday afternoon with minutes from its June meeting, and that’s likely to be the main highlight in what looks otherwise like a quiet day on Wall Street. Fed minutes come out at 2 p.m. ET, and could give more insight into the Fed’s thinking last month...

Monday is a “check the box” session: A trading day wedged between a holiday and a weekend where the market is only open because rules forbid having it close for more than 72 straight hours. But later in the week come some pretty key data, including monthly payrolls. Before that, we need...

It’s the last day of the quarter and the first half, and the stock market is coming off a steep decline Thursday. Still, it’s important to keep things in perspective, because the tech-heavy Nasdaq is still up 5% for the quarter and the broader market remains near all-time highs....

Things have lately started to fall in place for the financial sector. U.S. banking giants passed the Dodd-Frank Act supervisory stress test 2017 with flying colors last week. All 34 bank holding companies cleared the first round of test, reaffirming their strength to endure severe economic crisis (...

As the week winds down, stocks find themselves coming off the biggest daily S&P 500 (SPX) gain since late April and the third-best one-day rally of the year. The question is whether the market can sustain that momentum with volume likely to tick lower ahead of the holiday. The financial sector...