Analyst Paul Weisbruch of Street One Financial brings us his daily fund flows update, which today points out continued weakness among energy producers amid the recent oil meltdown, along with big inflows into a large dividend-focused fund.
Energy equities have had a bit of a hard time of late, since crude oil prices started to slide at the beginning of 2017 and this week we have seen options investors positioning for more potential downside in XOP. The June 33 puts have traded good size this week, with over 165,000 contracts in XOP.
Although these options are out-of-the-money at current levels, there are still about three months left until expiration. It’s worth noting that XOP traded in the $34’s just before Trump’s election last year, so a downturn to the $33 range certainly isn’t out of the question.
Elsewhere, we have talked about inflows into S&P 500 funds like SPY and IVV and we have also seen good sized inflows into VIG. VIG’s top holdings include higher-yielding mega cap names like 1) MSFT (4.41%), 2) JNJ (3.95%), 3) PEP (3.74%), 4) KO (3.47%) and 5) MCD (2.71%).
The SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Explore & Prod. ETF (NYSE:XOP) was trading at $36.67 per share on Thursday afternoon, down $0.3 (-0.81%). Year-to-date, XOP has declined -11.47%, versus a 6.74% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.
XOP currently has an ETF Daily News SMART Grade of C (Neutral), and is ranked #21 of 38 ETFs in the Energy Equities ETFs category.