December is here and with the arrival of the final month of the year comes some decent seasonality. How investors apply that seasonality at the sector and industry levels is what makes a difference.
With December being prime time in the holiday shopping season, it's not surprising that many investors expect retail exchange traded funds to perform well at this time of year. However, a former component of the consumer cyclical sector, that being media stocks, offer better December prospects.
The Invesco Dynamic Media ETF PBS is the way to play the strength of media equities in the final month of the year.
Why It's Important
PBS has closed December in positive territory 70% of the time in the past 10 years, with an average return of 1.6%, according to Schaeffer's Investment Research.
PBS, which is 14.5 years old, is having a decent year with a gain of 15.8%. The fund is the only ETF dedicated to media stocks, which now reside in the communication services sector.
“Among individual stocks, CBS Corporation CBS has typically been strong in December, adding 2.7% on average during the past 10 years,” according to Schaeffer's. “It's also been higher 80% of the time. CBS shares were last seen at $40.39, maintaining the uptrend that's been in place since the Oct. 31 seven-year low of $35.02. Also notice that Walt Disney Co DIS falls on this list of outperformers.”
PBS allocates 2.57% of its weight to Viacom VIAB, which is acquiring CBS. Due to the shifting definition of what constitutes a media company, PBS also has the feel of an internet ETF, allocating almost 15% of its combined weight to Alphabet GOOGL, Facebook FB and Twiter TWTR.
Alphabet is also among the 20 best S&P 500 names to own in December, averaging a December return of 2.47% over the past decade.
PBS's underlying index uses the following factors to evaluate components: price momentum, earnings momentum, quality, management action, and value.
However, PBS is mostly a growth fund as stocks with that classification combine for almost 60% of the fund's weight.
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