Corey Williams
Corey Williams's Latest Posts
SET Monthly Issue March 2017
Playing It Safe In Switzerland When you make your own mental list of the world’s safest and most secure countries, chances are you’ll include Switzerland. The perception is largely accurate, but doesn’t entirely mirror reality. One of Switzerland’s largest banks, UBS, was a big player in the U.S. subprime mortgage business. When the financial crisis […]
SET Portfolio Update February 2017
Sector Spotlight: The Case For Utility Stocks Every month we advise a hold on XLU, the Utilities Select Sector SPDR. Why? It performs month after month, year after year, as a solid source of income. This long-term view of utility stocks drove our decision to hang onto the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund when it […]
SET Monthly Issue February 2017
Marching Into Midcaps There’s nothing new about the allure of midcap stocks. Historically they have been the neighborhood market investors move for growth. The streets are lined with undiscovered stocks and high yield profits. But each of these attractive upsides comes with risk, so investors who march into midcap stocks should embrace a long-term horizon. […]
SET Portfolio Update January 2017
Sector Spotlight: Where Is Natural Gas Heading? Natural gas futures plunged 21% between December 28 and January 9. The futures hit a two-year high in late December, and then the gains were melted away by an unsettling series of weather forecasts calling for a warmer winter. Since then, a few rugged storms and the return […]
SET Monthly Issue January 2017
The Split Personality Sector Investing in health care means riding two horses at once. One is the hospital horse, the other is the pharmaceutical horse. 2016 was dreadful for health care stocks. The sector wound up the year down 3.94%, the worst performing of the ten major sectors which make up the overall market. Driving […]
SET Monthly Issue December 2016
The Unintended Consequences Of A Cigar Tax In 1960, when President Eisenhower signed the Cigar Excise Tax Extension, he set something in motion that went well beyond parejos and figuardos. Because of Washington’s bizarre legislative mashups, Public Law 86-779 gave people the opportunity to invest in portfolios of income-producing real estate. Eisenhower’s cigar tax law […]
SET Portfolio Update November 2016
What’s Next? For a week now, the markets have been digesting election results. When we look at how the incoming Trump administration policies may impact different sectors, the general consensus is that pharma, energy, and finance stocks will emerge as winners. Losers? The lineup includes hospitals, and just about all the sectors where business is […]
SET Monthly Issue November 2016
Doubling Down On Dividend Income We’re still in the same cautious frame of mind. We have been concerned with market volatility for a number of months now. This concern prompted us to recommend the iShares Edge MSCI Minimum Volatility Emerging Markets ETF so we could install a safety net to capture the upside of emerging […]
SET Portfolio Update October 2016
The Uncertain Autumn Last month we sold two positions… SPDR S&P Homebuilders (XHB) First Trust NASDAQ ABA Community Bank Index Fund (QABA) We were concerned with rising interest rates, and the general direction of the markets. Looking back over the past month, we’ve only seen one sector do well. Energy is up 2.89% over the […]
SET Monthly Issue October 2016
INCOME FROM INFRASTRUCTURE There are 607,380 bridges in America. That’s according to the Federal Government’s National Bridge Inventory. Safety officials say more than 10% of these bridges are unsafe. Experts have designated 65,605 bridges as “structurally deficient”. Another 20,808 bridges are classified as “fracture critical”. It’s not pretty. But neither are woefully outdated airport terminals, […]
