Last week was cheery for Wall Street, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq recording their best weekly advancement since July, rising about 3.7% and 4.6%, respectively. The Dow gained 3.3% to lock its best gain since August.
Last week was all about the ebb and flow in stimulus talks. Even afterpostponing the stimulus talks until after the election, U.S. President Donald Trump sought some aid approvals from Congress. Among the most-necessary ones, Trump wants an extension in the $25 billion in new payroll assistance to U.S. passenger airlines, furloughing thousands of workers amid dropping travel demand.
Moreover, Trump wanted Congress to approve a stand-alone bill that would allow a second round of $1,200 checks. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have shown support for such aids, though it is not clear if these proposals can be passed before the election.
On Friday, Trump said that he wants to “see a bigger stimulus package, frankly, than either the Democrats or Republicans are offering,” during Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, as quoted on Yahoo Finance.
There are reports that earlier on Friday, White House planned to offer a stimulus proposal totaling $1.8 trillion, $400 billion short of the plan House Democrats voted to advance last week. This, however, would still mark an increase from the $1.6 trillion Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had proposed.
Investors’ sentiments were upbeat last week as all anticipated some stimulus sooner or later. Against this backdrop, we highlight a few winning ETF areas.
Cannabis
Cannabis stocks gained last week on Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ comment that a Biden administration would decriminalize cannabis at a federal level in the United States. Since Biden has considerable chances of winning the election this year, cannabis stocks surged last week. The Cannabis ETF THCX (up12.3%), Global X Cannabis ETF (POTX) (up 12.2%) and Amplify Seymour Cannabis ETF (CNBS) (up 9.9%) were the toppers from the week.
Genomics
The gene-editing space has been dominating the headlines since the announcement of the 2020 Nobel Prize winners for Chemistry. The prestigious award has been won by Jennifer Doudna, PhD, and Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD, who are considered pioneers in the development of CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology as a “genetic scissors.” Following the news, major gene-editing stocks soared (read: Genomics ETFs Surge on Nobel Prize for Gene-Editing Pioneers).
ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (ARKG) (up 7%) and Global X Genomics & Biotechnology ETF GNOM (up 6.1%) gained last week.
Clean Energy
Chances are rising that the blue wave of Democrats will take control over the House and Senate in November. This means that Biden’s proposed policies are in focus right now. One such prominent area is green energy. This is why green or clean energy shares are soaring. Biden sees America becoming a 100% clean energy economy by 2035, having net-zero emission by 2050. Invesco Solar ETF TAN (7.6%) and Invesco WilderHill Clean Energy ETF (NYSE:XLE) (PBW) (up 7.4%) were the gainers (read: Clean Energy Stocks & ETFs To Buy As Biden Gains Popularity).
MLPs
Oil prices gained last week as Hurricane Delta has disrupted more than 90% of production in the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, energy stocks and ETFs benefited. MLPs were no exception.
This ETF is active and does not track a benchmark. The InfraCap MLP ETF seeks total return primarily through investments in equity securities of publicly-traded master limited partnerships and limited liability companies taxed as partnerships. InfraCap MLP ETF AMZA yields 35.51% annually and its expense ratio is 2.41%. AMZA has added 5.9% in the past week.
Semiconductor
The space is buzzing with mergers and acquisitions. Chip producer Xilinx (NASDAQ:XLNX) added 17% on Oct 9 on talks that Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) may buy the former for more than $30 billion. In September, the chip industry benefited from Nvidia Corp.'s (NASDAQ:NVDA) acquisition news of Arm Limited for $40 billion. As a result, the semi space soared last week. A better-than-expected monthly sales report from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) also boosted the space last week. SPDR S&P Semiconductor (NYSE:XSD) ETF XSD (up 6.6%) and Invesco Dynamic Semiconductors ETF (PSI) (up 5.6%) were the gainers.
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Invesco Solar ETF (TAN): ETF Research Reports
SPDR SP Semiconductor ETF (XSD): ETF Research Reports
InfraCap MLP ETF (AMZA): ETF Research Reports
Global X Genomics Biotechnology ETF (GNOM): ETF Research Reports
The Cannabis ETF (THCX): ETF Research Reports
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