Exponential Thinking (Peter Diamandis) - Exponential Finance 2014

Vanguard Canada Must Own ETFs for Canadian Investors. VUN and VFV.

Vanguard Canada provide the best and cheapest ETFs available to Canadian investors.  Two must have ETFs for Canadian investors are the US Total Stock Market ETF (VUN) and the S&P 500 ETF (VFV).  Both are NOT hedged and provide broad exposure to the US stock market and the US dollar. They are the cheapest ETFs of their kind and have extremely low management expense ratios (MER).  The MER for VUN is 0.15% while the MER for VFV is a category low of 0.08%.

Biotechnology & Health Care Stocks & ETFs Continue To Lead The Stock Market Higher

Biotechnology and health care stocks and ETFs continue to lead the market.  This is becoming a dominant theme within the broad technology sector.  It is likely that health care and biotechnology stocks continue to grow in relative market cap weight in the major US indices (i.e. NASDAQ 100 & S&P 500).

Year End Mid Term Election Year Rally Underway. Small & Mid Cap Stocks Leading.

The strong mid-term election year end rally is underway.  Small-cap (IWM) and mid-cap (MDY) ETFs have taken the lead.

Biotechnology ETFs post new 52 week highs

Public Investor Sentiment is Extremely Negative

Public market sentiment is extremely negative.  Fear is currently running higher than it did during the Euro Debt Crisis of 2011.  The difference then was that fear didn't reach similar levels in 2011 until all of the problems with the euro zone became apparent and the S&P 500 had corrected approximately 15-20%.  Fear is higher today with less downside movement in equities.  What's interesting is how negative public sentiment is when compared to investor sentiment.  Investor Intelligence reports somewhat bearish or neutral sentiment while public sentiment has become extremely negative, extremely fast.  This is generally good for the stock market.

(charts courtesy CNN Fear & Greed, Stockcharts.com)

How much is oil worth?

How much is oil worth?  In my opinion, much less that its current price.  As illustrated above, the price of oil does not have a definitive long term price trend.  Analysts will often use supply and demand data in order to forecast the price of oil as they do with gold and other commodities.  They do not, however, take into consideration how technological evolution not only affects oil exploration, but oil usage.  Is it reasonable to assume that the world will consume more oil in the future than it does today?  I think the price of oil is based on approximately 75% public psychology and 25% current fundamentals.  It is short sighted to suggest that over time, a better technology won't replace oil as a primary source of energy (ie. solar).  Oil, other commodities, bonds and real estate tend to go up in price when global stocks are not (i.e. during a secular bear market).  We're now in a secular bull market for global equities that probably began in 2012.  Expect most commodities (including oil) to fall in price.  Based its historical price, a barrel of oil is probably worth around $30.