Wall Street has regained momentum this week. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq surged to record highs for the fourth consecutive day driven by the surge in the information technology sector, which is most vulnerable to trade wars. This is especially true as optimism over trade negotiations and solid rebound in broad-based technology and Internet stocks buoyed up sentiments.
Both United States and Mexico agreed to a bilateral deal, which will rewrite North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and allow Trump to impose 25% tariffs on imports of Mexican-made passenger vehicles and auto parts above certain volumes. Meanwhile, Canada also rejoined NAFTA talks and optimism over an imminent trade deal with the United States bolstered sentiment.
Among the FAANGs, Amazon.com (AMZN – Free Report) and Alphabet (GOOGL – Free Report) got a boost after Morgan Stanley lifted its price target on both the stocks while Apple (AAPL – Free Report) hit an all-time high, closing at $222.98.
Rounds of upbeat data signaling improving economic growth provided a solid boost to economically sensitive growth sectors like technology, which typically perform well in a maturing economic cycle. Notably, the U.S. economy is growing a little bit faster than earlier estimated. Per the second reading of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, GDP growth rose 4.2%, up from the initial reading of 4.1% last month. Americans continue to be optimistic as the Consumer Confidence Index, as measured by the Conference Board, jumped to 133.4 – the highest level since October 2000 – from the revised 127.9 in July.
While the winners are broad-based across the sector, we have highlighted five ETFs that are easily leading the current technology surge. These ETFs have gained nearly 5% over the past week.
First Trust Technology AlphaDEX Fund (FXL – Free Report)
This fund follows an AlphaDEX methodology by tracking the StrataQuant Technology Index and ranks stocks in the space on various growth and value factors, eliminating the bottom-ranked 25% of the stocks. The approach results in a basket of 89 stocks that are well spread out across each security with none holding more than 2.43% of assets. From a market cap look, mid-caps account for 49% share while large caps take the remainder with 3% going to small caps. The fund is rich with AUM of $2.2 billion and average trading volume of around 146,000 shares. It charges 63 bps in annual fees and has a Zacks ETF Rank #1 (Strong Buy) with a Medium risk outlook.
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