Why the US Moat Index Beat the S&P 500 Index in July
Domestic moat companies, as represented by the Morningstar® Wide Moat Focus IndexSM (MWMFTR, or “U.S. Moat Index”), once again posted strong results in July.
Real Insights
How Does the U.S. Government Borrow Money?
With the national debt rising in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, here's how the U.S. government actually borrows money.
How Did Marcus Lemonis Make His Money?
Marcus Lemonis, a Beirut-born businessman, has earned quite the living in the U.S. What's his net worth and how did Lemonis make his money?
How Much Does Jack Ma Make per Second?
Jack Ma's overall net worth is wild, but his per-second income is even more startling. Here's a breakdown of the Alibaba and Ant Group founder's finances.
Is Tastytrade Legit?
Is Tastytrade as legit as it claims? Here's what investors should know before diving in.
How Does Affirm Make Its Money?
With the Affirm IPO on the way, here's a rundown on how this buy-now-pay-later company makes money.
What's the Difference Between ESG, SRI, and Impact Investing?
Not all alternative investing techniques are created equal. Here's how to tell the difference between ESG, SRI, and impact investing.
Can Green Bonds Help Create Sustainable Long-Term Returns?
Green bonds are well suited to access the huge amount of capital required to fund low-carbon green projects.
Can Government Incentives Boost Green Bond Growth?
In order for the green bond market to expand further, government roles are vital.
What Led to the Demand Growth for Green Bonds?
The World Bank has projected an annual investment by cities of $100.0 billion through 2050 to prevent the harmful impact of climate change.
How Gold Stocks Have Performed This Year
Gold and gold miners didn’t start off the year on a good note.
Gold Prices Could Test $1,300
Gold prices tend to rise in the fourth quarter of the calendar year. Gold prices have gained an unannualized ~3.8% in the fourth quarter.
What Are the Best Hydrogen Energy Stocks to Buy?
The hydrogen fuel cell sector may have plummeted, but not for long. If you want to buy, now is the time — and these stocks are your best bet.
How Gold Mining Industry Has Revived Itself
The last ten years have been a roller coaster ride for the gold (GLD) (GDXJ) (GDX) mining industry.
US Pickup Trucks: Competition Will only Intensify
Pickup trucks and SUVs have maintained the allure of the US auto sector while the sector is sluggish. Consumers are dumping sedans for pickup trucks
How Starbucks Obtained a Wide Economic Moat Rating
Cost Advantage in Action: Four Case Studies of Moat Companies To demonstrate the power of cost advantages in creating economic moats, we highlight four moat companies: U.S. based Starbucks and Compass Mineral, and international moat companies: Kao (Japan) and Ramsay Health Care (Australia). Starbucks Corp (SBUX US) boasts a “wide economic moat” rating from Morningstar from […]
What Are the Sources to Obtain Economic Moats?
“How Moats Translate into Sustainable Competitive Advantages” is a five-part moat investing education series that explores the primary sources of economic moats. The idea of an economic moat refers to how likely a company is to keep competitors at bay for an extended period. According to Morningstar Equity Research, there are five key attributes that […]
Bank Loans or Floating Rate Notes: Which Should You Consider?
Investment-grade corporate floaters in particular not only benefit investors when short-term interest rates rise but also carry lower credit risk.
RAAX ETF: Capturing Real Benefits of Real Assets
RAAX’s allocation process provides exposure to segments with better returns profiles while managing overall portfolio risk.
Why Should Investors Focus on Real Yield in Emerging Markets?
Real yields in emerging markets (or EM) have remained at compelling levels over the past few years.
Could Energy Continue Its Wild Ride in 2018?
From the presidential election in November 2016 through August 2017, the energy sector saw its worst time.
What Imparts Transparency to Digital Assets?
Digital assets based on DLT (distributed ledger technology) allows users to initiate and verify their own transactions without any central authority such as banks.
Things to Know Before You Buy Bitcoin
The sharp rise and fall in the price of bitcoin are mainly because ownership of the currency is heavily concentrated in just a few hands.
Is Bitcoin a Bubble?
The price of bitcoin (SOXL) (SOXX) has risen 69,278.6% over the last five years. On the other hand, in the last seven days, it has plummeted 27% to $12,466.
Blockchain and Bitcoin: But What Else Is Blockchain Used For?
Deutsche Bank is planning to use blockchain technology in currency settlement, trade processing, and derivative contracts.
Is Bitcoin Ready to Replace Real Currency?
Despite the higher number of transactions that need to be updated regularly by users, the transaction capacity is intentionally kept very low by the bitcoin founders.
Why the Number of Bitcoins Is Limited
The founders of bitcoin have set a limit of 21 million bitcoins that can be mined over a period of time. Of those, 16.8 million are already in circulation.
How Blockchain Technology Could Reduce Criminal Activities
Before updating data on a blockchain, users must agree about the veracity of the transaction through a process called consensus.
How Digital Assets Could Generate Income
Blockchain technology holds a lot of promise due to its many advantages such as transparency, faster transactions at lower costs, and a reliable system.
Why the Future Belongs to Digital Assets
In DLT (distributed ledger technology), details of the transactions are recorded in multiple places called blocks. These blocks are then chained together on a shared network.
What Helped the Financial Sector in 2017?
Interestingly for all the talk about financials this year, the S&P 500 GICS Level 1 Financial Sector is only up 19% vs. 17%+ for the S&P500 as a whole.
Can Smart Beta Go Wrong?
The smart beta approach aims to benefit from market inefficiencies to deliver higher risk-adjusted returns and improve diversification.
New China Is All about Technology
One of the biggest trends in the global economy over the past two years is the reduction in manufacturing capacity in China (FXI) (MCHI).
Why Emerging Markets Are Rallying
There are a lot of reasons behind the sharp rally in EMs (SCHE). The prominent reason is that the GDP growth in many of these nations has improved in the last few quarters partially on the back of the rise in commodity prices like copper and oil.
Europe Dominates Global Green Bonds Issuance in 2017
Green muni bonds accounted for 56% of US green bond issuances in the first half of 2017 and are expected to touch $10 billion this year.
Could Laggards Come Out as Winners?
As with most timeframes in the market, the laggards are a mix of surprising and obvious names (in hindsight, of course). This October, they stand out a little more than usual since so many asset classes are up this year.
Will Tax Cuts Bump Up Treasury Yields?
Since early September, US ten-year and longer-dated paper has been falling. Rates for the US government ten-year bond jumped from 2.04% on September 7 all the way to 2.36% on October 10.
1 Technical Trend That Could Affect Gold Prices
Investor complacency doesn’t hide the fact that there are financial risks to QT. Forty percent of the Fed’s balance sheet unwind is in mortgage-backed securities at the same time that the housing market is showing signs of slowing.
How Tightening Could Affect Gold Prices
Since the financial crisis, the stock market has risen consistently as long as the Fed continued to buy treasuries and mortgage-backed securities through its quantitative easing policies (QE 1-3).
How Gold Companies Have Performed in 2017
Gold stock indices also traded near their highs for the year, but then followed the gold price lower. During September the NYSE Arca Gold Miners Index (GDMNTR) retreated 6.5%.
Efficient Scale Offers a Narrow Moat
Across the five moat sources (network effect, intangible assets, cost advantage, switching costs, and efficient scale), efficient scale is the most likely to drive a “narrow moat” rating from Morningstar.
Telefonica Is a Dominant Player in Over 20 Countries
Telefonica SA (TEF SM) is headquartered in Spain and is one of the world’s largest telephone operators reaching more than 350 million customers.
UPS Is Likely to Strengthen Its Wide Economic Moat
United Parcel Services (UPS US) earns a “wide economic moat” rating from Morningstar from efficient scale, cost advantage, and the network effect.
CSX Corporation Has a Wide Economic Moat
To demonstrate the power of efficient scale in creating economic moats, we highlight four companies: U.S.-based wide moats CSX Corporation and UPS, and international narrow moats Telefonica SA (Spain) and CapitaLand Commercial (Singapore).
What Investors Should Consider before Investing in REITs
A REIT (or real estate investment trust) is a company that owns and manages income-producing real estate.
Are Small Caps Worth the Risk Right Now?
The small-cap stock universe started rallying after Trump’s victory in November.
How Secure Are Municipal Bonds?
Compared to a corporate bond with a similar credit rating, muni bonds are less likely to default while offering modest yields.
Municipal Bonds’ Credit Quality Still Prevails
In this series, we will shed light on Moody’s recent data report, US Municipal Bond Defaults and Recoveries, 1970–2016. Muni bond prices sparked in 2016, especially when President Trump announced his infrastructure spending plans.
A Glance at Muni Bonds’ Performance in 2016
The performance of municipal bonds has fallen since the 2016 election, as President Trump’s tax reform and infrastructure spending plans have caused some concern among investors.
Improving Economies Make Strong Case for EM Local Debt
As the emerging market local debt assets (EBND) (ELD) continue to evolve and expand, investors are increasingly looking for opportunities in the space to enhance returns.