Our Mission

We cater to the do-it-yourself investor who believes in taking control of his/her financial destiny. We are investors who manage our own money. Our expertise is in ETF Research and Analysis. Our website is to be used for educational and informational purposes only. Investors may want to use our ETFTrack - E-NewsLetter - as starting point for further research.

Background

With the rising popularity of ETFs, we seriously began researching and started investing in ETFs from May 2004 and found that active ETF investing is a very effective way to participate in the market. We also learned that active ETF investing requires a totally different strategy than Growth Stock Investing. We started picking ETFs from May 2005 after finetuning our strategy.

Our Research Approach

Our ETF Research approach is based on a unique model that considers these major analysis areas:

• Relative Strength Analysis
• Economic Analysis
• Trend Analysis
• Demand & Supply Analysis
• Market Breadth Analysis

We have our own methodology which we use to perform the above analysis and we come up with our ETF selections every week.

We strongly believe our ETFTrack - E-NewsLetter - can be a very effective research tool for your ETF investing.

Relative Strength Analysis

Relative Strength Analysis is one of the most effective but least understood analysis approaches. ETFs that display higher relative strength over some specific periods of time tend to outperform those that don't. Relative Strength indicates outperformance in both up and down markets. The reason why we use Relative Strength Analysis is because it has no bias to it as it reflects the strength or weakness as the market action indicates.

We analyze the Relative Strength of every ETF we track on a weekly basis. This helps to smooth out the daily fluctuations and provide a clearer picture.

Economic Analysis

Economic Analysis is a vast area to delve into and we can be sure to say that it is virtually impossible to track the various metrics associated with this type of analysis. We have chosen to focus only on the most critical aspects of this area that we think will have considerable impact on market action. Some of the most important areas we pay attention to are:

• Outlook for Interest Rates
• Behavior of the Yield Curve
• Consumer Sentiment
• Corporate Performance
• Inflation Outlook
• Fed Outlook on Economy
• GDP Data

Trend Analysis

In investing it pays to be attentive to trends. After all, the time tested saying goes: "Trend is Your Friend". The easiest way to understand and evaluate trends is to use a well defined, carefully selected Moving Average system. We essentially use the 10-week, 20-week and 40-week Simple Moving Average systems to determine the trend of every ETF. Our goal here is to identify those ETFs that are presently in a well-established trend and also those that are likely to establish a trend either to the up side or down side.

Demand & Supply Analysis

In our experience we have found that the basics of Economics play a vital role with reference to ETFs as well. ETFs that are in high demand are priced higher and vice versa. There are many ways to gauge demand and supply and our analysis here is based on a very unique and powerful proprietary formula which enables us to track this for every ETF on a Weekly Basis. We take the Weekly values and make some additional calculations to give us an indication of how the demand and supply situation is over longer periods of time.

Market Breadth Analysis

In our experience we have found that astute investors don't overlook market breadth. We analyze market breadth every week using our own proprietary indicator. Market Breadth Analysis is very important to determine the quality of market action. Market Breadth Analysis also gives a handle on Market Behavior which tends to become contrarian at crucial moments. When most investors expect the market to fall further, typically markets bottom and vice versa. We track Market Breadth closely every week.

Technical Research Tools

Over these years we have built some very specific tools for our research to finetune our analysis. We use these tools to make an evaluation of the technical strength of an ETF.

Relative Strengh Analysis Using - RS Rating

• We calculate the Relative Strength of each ETF on a Weekly Basis based on its price performance for the year. ETFs with high RS Rating are outperforming in price within the ETF domain. Research has indicated that ETFs that have higher relative strength over a 3 month timeframe tend to do better over the next 3 to 6 month time frame.

Demand & Supply Analysis Usng - BIR Rating

• A Unique Rating that determines the Technical Bullish / Bearish Interest that an ETF logs in any given week. We calculate this BIR Rating for every ETF. The BIR Rating is a unique rating system that individual investors cannot find elsewhere. The BIR stands for Bullish/Bearish Interest and is our interpretation of the Price and Volume action in an ETF for a given week. The BIR Rating's range goes from +100 to -100 with +100 being the strongest and -100 the weakest. We calculate this using the OHLC and Volume values for every ETF.
• The higher the BIR Rating the higher the bullish interest. The lower the BIR rating the higher the Bearish Interest. In practical terms members should be alert to any BIR Rating over 35 accompanied by huge, above average increase in volume.
• On Wall Street the ultimate predicator of which camp won the trading action on any given day is determined by that day's closing price. The stronger the close the stronger the bulls prevailed and vice versa. The BIR Rating provides a peek into this.

Trend Analysis Using - Moving Average Systems

• We use the 10-week, 20-week and 40-week Simple Moving Averages to perform our technical trend analysis. These long term moving averages tend to smooth out fluctations and give a clearer picture of the underlying trend. We also pay close attention to not only the moving average values but also the movement of the moving averages as they provide valuable insight into the behavior of the ETF.

Market Breadth Analysis Using - Market Breadth Indicator

• We track a unique Market Breadth indicator which provides us a fairly broad view of how the overall ETF action has been over the entire week. This indicator works on the "Ying and Yang" principle. When our breadth indicator dips too low then there is a likelihood of a rally to commence. If the indicator hits the peak level and stays there for a while there is always a possiblity of a pullback. This is not a very precise indicator but it helps to gauge the breadth to a reasonable extent. We also use it as a confirming indicator in our research.

ETFs That We Track

At this time we track all the ETFs that are listed and traded in the US Exchanges. This is over 700 ETFs and the numbers continue to increase every few weeks. A variety of ETFs are listed and traded in the NASDAQ, and NYSE Arca for different categories and asset classes.

We update the closing prices for ETFs after the trading week is over as our research approach focuses on weekly market action.

We are Independent

• We perform our research with data available in the public domain and applying our own technical models developed over years.