Yahoo Finance Best ETF Areas of Last Week
Wall Street was upbeat last week. The S&P 500 added 1.3% last week, the Dow Jones inched up 0.3% last week and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 2.4% last week. Easing inflation, soft manufacturing data renewed Fed rate cut bets and the strengthening of the tech rally led to the gains last week.
A decline in Treasury yields earlier in the week bolstered the market rally. Both the 10-year and 30-year rates reached their lowest levels since late March. U.S. technology stocks recorded their largest weekly inflows last week in nine weeks, with the sector seeing a revival after its mega-cap-led rally lost steam by the end of May, per strategists at BofA Global Research, as quoted on MarketWatch.
Tech stocks hauled in nearly $1 billion in the week ending Wednesday, the highest in more than two months, after experiencing the same amount of outflows the previous week, a team of strategists led by Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at BofA Global Research, said in a Friday client note.
Meanwhile, the US economy added 272,000 jobs in May 2024, the maximum in five months, compared to a downwardly revised 165,000 in April, and well above forecasts of 185,000. The reading is also higher than the average monthly gain of 232,000 over the prior 12 months and 246,000 in the first four months of the year.
Against this backdrop, below we highlight a few winning ETF areas of last week.
ETFs in Focus
Bitcoin Miners
Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF WGMI – Up 15%
VanEck Digital Transformation ETF DAPP – Up 10.1%
Bitcoin prices Bitcoin surpassed the $71,000-mark last week, indicating increased market confidence in potential Fed rate cuts. Investors should also note that the short-term correlation between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq 100 Index is at its highest since early 2023 (per Bloomberg), indicating that further gains in the tech-heavy index may coincide with a rise in the crypto market leader (read: Will Bitcoin ETFs Soar on Sooner-Than-Expected Fed Rate Cut?).
Natural Gas
United States Natural Gas Fund LP UNG – Up 14.7%
United States 12 Month Natural Gas Fund LP UNL – Up 8.9%
As efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions intensify, natural gas is anticipated to maintain its critical role in the U.S. electricity generation mix. Natural gas is the largest source of electricity in the United States. With the electricity demand increasing day by day for seamless operation and execution of artificial intelligence (AI), natural gas has every reason to rally.
Semiconductor
TrueShares Technology, AI & Deep Learning ETF LRNZ – Up 5.5%
VanEck Semiconductor ETF SMH – Up 4.9%
These funds are heavy on NVIDIA NVDA, which overtook Apple AAPL last week, topping $3 trillion in market cap and becoming the second-most valuable company in the United States. NVIDIA has an estimated 80% market share in AI chips for data centers, which are attracting billions of dollars in spending from big cloud vendors. Companies like Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Alphabet are rapidly expanding their AI computing capabilities, boosting NVIDIA's growth (read: NVIDIA Overtakes Apple: ETFs to Tap the Incredible Growth Story).
Weight-Loss Drugs
Roundhill GLP-1 & Weight Loss ETF OZEM – Up 3.8%
Shares of weight loss drug manufacturers – Eli Lilly LLY and Novo Nordisk NVO – gained 3.5% and 6.8% last week. More than 1 billion individuals worldwide are living with obesity, a figure expected to impact over half the population by 2035.
There is intense competition among the companies producing GLP-1 medicines. Roundhill Investment believes that weight loss drugs, especially GLP-1 agonists, represent one of the most revolutionary advancements in the global pharmaceuticals industry (read: Play These New ETFs to Tap Lucrative Weight Loss Drug Market).
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Apple Inc. (AAPL) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Novo Nordisk A/S (NVO) : Free Stock Analysis Report
Eli Lilly and Company (LLY) : Free Stock Analysis Report
NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) : Free Stock Analysis Report
VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH): ETF Research Reports
United States 12 Month Natural Gas ETF (UNL): ETF Research Reports
United States Natural Gas ETF (UNG): ETF Research Reports
TrueShares Technology, AI and Deep Learning ETF (LRNZ): ETF Research Reports
VanEck Digital Transformation ETF (DAPP): ETF Research Reports
Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI): ETF Research Reports
Roundhill GLP-1 & Weight Loss ETF (OZEM): ETF Research Reports
