Chart of the Week Archive

Junk Bonds Outperform Stocks

Junk bonds continue to outperform stocks on the year as the asset classes compete for investors' increasing appetite for risk.

The SPDR Barclays Capital High Yield Bond ETF (JNK) is up nearly 22% this year compared to only 7% for the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY).

The $2 billion JNK fund invests in non-investment grade, fixed-rate, taxable corporate bonds that have a remaining maturity of at leas

Equities Rally on Earnings

US equities rallied 7% last week on stronger than expected earnings reports.  The largest broad market ETF, the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY), finished last week at  $94.13, up $6.17 or 7% from the prior week's close.

Earnings from Goldman Sachs, Intel and IBM beat expectations as cost cutting efforts offset lackluster top line results in Q2.

Oil Dips (Again)

Oil prices have slipped back to a seven week low, falling below $60 a barrel on Friday.  Over-supply, weaker than expected demand and a rally built on unrealized hopes are to blame.

The largest oil ETF, the $2 billion United States Oil Fund (USO) is down 18% from where it was just a month ago.  USO tracks the spot price movements of light, sweet crude oil with a portfolio of listed crude oil futures contracts and other oil related futures, forwards

Technology in the Spotlight

As the Q2 earnings season unfolds, investors will be watching the Technology sector closely.

After outperforming the broader market for most of the year (see Technology Pulls Ahead from early April) technology stocks will now need to deliver on anticipated improvement in earnings performance.  For more on Q2 earnings, see Mark Gongloff's Crunch Time: How Toug