An Amazing Gift from the Financial Markets by Marc Charles

An Amazing Gift from the Financial Markets

6:47 AM

Dear Entrepreneur:

Today I’ll show you an incredible “gift” investors, speculators and traders are using to make money.

The “gift” is exchange-traded funds or ETF for short.

Hang on……

I know you’re probably familiar with ETFs.

But I’ll show you how my clients and I are making money with them. You won’t learn these tactics on financial websites or from the clowns on CNBC.

An exchange-traded fund (or ETF) is an investment vehicle traded on stock exchanges, like stocks.

I’ll give you a powerful overview in a second.

The profit making potential of ETFs is mind-boggling…and here’s why…

The risk of trading ETFs is super-manageable, and especially for beginning traders and speculators.

I like the ETFs for three reasons:

1.     Risk is limited to the initial investment (LOW)

2.     The ETF market is easy to enter and exit (LIQUID)

3.     ETFs offer nice leverage (LEVERAGE)

You won’t have the same leveraging or pyramiding ability of a futures contract or Forex.

But there’s a new type of ETF which enables traders and investors to leverage opportunities in a big way.

Marc’s ETF “Cheat” Sheet

An ETF holds assets such as stocks, bonds, currencies, or commodities and trades at approximately the same price as the net asset value of its underlying assets.

The most popular ETFs track an index, like the Dow Jones Industrial Average or S&P 500.

ETFs can be an attractive tool for making money because of the relatively low risk, tax efficiency, and stock-like features.

An ETF combines the feature of a mutual fund meaning it can be purchased or redeemed at the end of the trading day for its net asset value (or NAV).

ETFs traditionally have been index funds, but in 2008 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission authorized the creation of actively-managed ETFs.

What is an Actively-Managed ETF?

An actively managed ETF will have a benchmark index (like the S&P 500), but managers can change sector allocations, market-time trades and/or deviate from the index as they see fit.

This produces investment returns which will not mirror the underlying index perfectly.

Passive ETFs typically follow indexes pretty closely, which allows investors to track the fund fairy easily.

Oil Exchange-Traded Funds

The price of oil has climbed to historic highs.

However, not everyone believes oil will remain at historically high levels for eternity, including me.

In fact, the last four months is a good indication of what can happen in the oil market….it can skyrocket when bullets start flying.

But…..and listen closely……oil can plummet in price too! Almost NO ONE believes this….but this is where the real money is made.

For example, look what happened to oil during the recent disaster is Japan….the price of oil went down!

You can make a fortune with ETFs when you understand how to trade markets when before they skyrocket or plummet… especially if you go against the crowd at the right time. 

On top of that, with EFTs you can wait indefinitely!

Gold Exchange-Traded Funds

Gold is trading at near three-decade highs.

But you can make a fortune when and if gold plummets in price too!

I know….this is a hard thing to grasp. It’s also one of the hardest lessons for novice traders to learn.

Look around…..everyone from Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to Warren Buffet and George Soros is touting gold as the greatest investment since the dawn of civilization. There are hundreds of “buy gold” commercials running at any given time.

But very few people believe the price of gold or precious metals will decline over the next 12 to18 months.

The so-called financial experts try to convince people gold will surge in price for eternity.

But like stocks, real estate, bonds, baseball cards and diamonds this is not always the case.

Sure… in times of sudden panic, stock market crashes, currency wars, etc. the price of gold “tends” to rise quickly.

But the price of gold can plummet during crises, too – as witnessed in the gold market recently.

For example, the price of gold surged from $400 an ounce in 2004 to more than $1400 an ounce in 2010.

However, at the beginning of the real estate and mortgage crisis in 2008 gold actually FELL in price.

So whatever your view happens to be there’s likely a Gold ETF you can trade.

Cool Insight on “Ultra” Exchange-Traded Funds

If, as an investor or trader, you believe the price of something will go up, you are considered bullish, or a “bull.” If you believe the price of something will go down you would be considered bearish, or a “bear.”

As an investor or a trader you might even be “ultra” bullish or bearish, meaning you think the price of something is going to go up or down in a big way.

That is the beauty of a new breed of ETFs called “ultras.”

Ultra Exchange-Traded Funds enable an investor or trader to leverage an investment in a much bigger way than just an ordinary ETF.

Here are a few “ultra” ETFs you can track on any financial website. I’ve noted the underlying stock, bond, currency, or commodity:

ProShares SIJ UltraShort (Industrials)
ProShares EFU UltraShort (MSCI EAFE)
ProShares EEV UltraShort MSCI (Emerging Markets)
ProShares EWV UltraShort MSCI (Japan)
ProShares MZZ UltraShort (MidCap400)
ProShares SCC UltraShort (Consumer Services)
ProShares DXD UltraShort (Dow30)
ProShares FXP UltraShort (FTSE/Xinhua China 25)
Proshares SKF UltraShort (Financials)
ProShares RXD UltraShort (Health Care)
ProShares DUG UltraShort (Oil & Gas)
ProShares QID UltraShort  (QQQ) Twice inverse of NASDAQ-100
ProShares SRS UltraShort (Real Estate)
ProShares SDK UltraShort (Russell MidCap Growth)

ProShares SMN UltraShort (Basic Materials)
ProShares SZK UltraShort (Consumer Goods)

How to Make Money with ETFs

Every investor has an opinion of the world financial markets, politics, and economy.

This is why the markets move so dramatically – up, down, and sideways.

In order to make money with ETFs your world view of the future needs to be accurate.

What’s more, you need to be fairly accurate in terms of timing too.

For example, in 2000 I was confident the Dot-com hysteria was a joke. I was advising several companies being run by 20-year olds valued at more than $100 million each…with NO sales.

It seemed like everyone was swept up in the fantasy.

And novice traders were making cash hand over fist on stocks of these Dot-com companies – on paper.

But no one I knew or read about removed profits from the Dot-com fiasco by the time everything collapsed.

In this case my world view of the market was correct. I made a bundle shorting tech and Internet company stocks. But my exposure to downside risk was way too high.

On top of that my timing was off by 10 months or so. I knew the market would plunge but timing is crucial.

Our view needs to be accurate in terms of “timing.”

And so…..

In order to make money with ETFs we need to examine the market we’re investing and calculate a “reasonable” time frame.

Now….one of the great aspects of ETFs is timing is not overly important.

You can hold an ETF for weeks, months and even years without any downside risk, margin calls or frustration.

For example, everyone knows the housing and real estate market has been in serious trouble for more than 3 years.

Some investors believe the housing market will bounce back in 2011. While other investors believe the worst is yet to come this year.

The reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

If you believe the housing market will stay the same or get slightly worse there are two ETFs you could purchase to take advantage of that trend:

Ultra Short Financials Proshares (AMEX: SKF)

This ETF benefits when and if financial services suffer. This would include real estate lenders, international banks; property and casualty insurance companies; companies invested directly or indirectly in real estate; diversified financial companies, such as Federal National Mortgage Association, credit card issuers and investment advisers; securities brokers and dealers, and investment banks,

ProFunds Short Real Estate Inv (MUTF:SRPIX)This ETF invests in derivatives that ProFund Advisors believes should have similar daily return characteristics as the inverse (opposite) of the daily return of the index. Assets of the fund not invested in derivatives will typically be held in money market instruments. It is non-diversified

The beauty of ETFs and specifically “ultra” and “double short” ETFs is they enable a trader to leverage markets (up or down) in a big way, but offer lower downside risk of futures and Forex markets.

There you have it!

Everything you wanted to know about ETFs but were afraid to ask!

Your humble host…

Marc Charles

******* Action Strategy *********

Start researching the “ultra” ETF market today.

When you start trading ETFs you’ll need an online brokerage account.

But that’s easy…..you can open an account with as little as $500.

The right ETF enables you to profit if a market skyrockets, plummets or trades sideways.

On top of that, you can make a boatload of money with double long or double short (ultra) ETFs.

You can subscribe to ETF publications and advisories to gain some street smart insight. I’ve included a couple of recommendations in today’s issue.

Paper Trade ETFs!

You can trade ETFs on paper and never risk a dime!

Simply select the ETFs you want to buy (or sell, or purchase options on), write down the current market price, and watch them in the paper or financial websites go up or down in value.

Develop an exit strategy.

Buy and hold for eternity will not work in the coming months and years. Nothing lasts forever – so develop a specific exit plan and remove profits regularly.

******* Valuable Resources ********

Exchange-Traded Funds Explained– Investopedia

Exchange-Traded Funds Center – Yahoo! Finance

ETF Investment Guide - seekingalpha.com ETFs

CEF Connect – ETFconnect.com

ETF Investor Newsletter

ETF Trends

Morningstar ETF Investor

New Book Recommendations

The ETF Handbook by David Abner

Super Sectors: How to Outsmart the Market Using Sector Rotation and ETFs by John Nyaradi

The ETF Book: All You Need to Know About Exchange-Traded Funds by Richard Ferri