Market News

Looking at the underlying holdings of the ETFs in our coverage universe at ETF Channel, we have compared the trading price of each holding against the average analyst 12-month forward target price, and computed the weighted average implied analyst target price for the ETF itself. For the iShares S&P 500 Growth ETF (AMEX: IVW), we found that the implied analyst target price for the ETF based upon its underlying holdings is $132.20 per unit.

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The DOJ announced Wednesday afternoon that it has reached a settlement with Anheuser-Busch InBev that will permit the beer giant to acquire SABMiller in a merger worth $107 billion. The deal, which was first announced last fall, will marry some of the biggest names in brewing, including Budweiser and Corona (Anheuser-Busch brands) and Miller Lite and Peroni (SABMiller brands).

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Wealthy Asian investors are turning away from real estate - long a favored investment among the region's high net worth individuals - and instead shifting towards foreign equities, a new study from East & Partners Asia has found.

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As early as May 16th and 17th it was clear to the public that legendary investor George Soros had made a significant investment in the Gold Market and had sold a large quantity of equities. While there has been more than two months since these disclosures were made, now is an opportunity to see how the small investor who had held these positions would be faring.

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We are entering the heart of earnings season. It may be a wild one as Wall Street's outlook is quite poor.

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Qlik, one of the leaders in the Business Intelligence and Analytics market, is expected to release its Q2 2016 earnings report at the end of this month. The company has seen a double digit year-to-year growth in its top-line over the past few years and the trend continued in Q1 2016 as well. For the March quarter, the company reported a 15% increase in revenue compared to Q1 2015. Qlik’s growth can be largely attributed to its expanding customer base, which has more than doubled over the last five years. The recent innovations in QlikSense, Cloud, Data Discovery and Visualization, have enabled Qlik to crack deals and partnerships with Wipro, DocuSign and Keyrus, which we believe will help Qlik further increase its customer base going forward.

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Looking at the sectors faring best as of midday Thursday, shares of Utilities companies are outperforming other sectors, higher by 0.2%. Within that group, Public Service Enterprise Group Inc (NYSE: PEG) and Consolidated Edison Inc (NYSE: ED) are two large stocks leading the way, showing a gain of 0.8% and 0.7%, respectively. Among utilities ETFs, one ETF following the sector is the Utilities Select Sector SPDR ETF (AMEX: XLU), which is up 0.2% on the day, and up 21.70% year-to-date. Public Service Enterprise Group Inc, meanwhile, is up 20.37% year-to-date, and Consolidated Edison Inc is up 25.75% year-to-date. Combined, PEG and ED make up approximately 7.3% of the underlying holdings of XLU.

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Looking at options trading activity among components of the S&P 500 index, there is noteworthy activity today in Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT), where a total volume of 38,743 contracts has been traded thus far today, a contract volume which is representative of approximately 3.9 million underlying shares (given that every 1 contract represents 100 underlying shares). That number works out to 78.8% of CAT's average daily trading volume over the past month, of 4.9 million shares. Particularly high volume was seen for the $85 strike call option expiring August 19, 2016, with 4,435 contracts trading so far today, representing approximately 443,500 underlying shares of CAT. Below is a chart showing CAT's trailing twelve month trading history, with the $85 strike highlighted in orange:

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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling coalition won a comfortable majority of contested parliament seats this month, giving it dominance in both legislative chambers. Party over already. The capture of 70 seats, of 121 open, on July 10 doesn’t quite point to popularity for the PM, who's known globally for ambitious economic revival policies. It means a vote for business as usual at best and comes with growing pressure for the revival policies, dubbed Abenomics, to live up to their fame and stimulate the world’s still ailing third biggest economy.

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