February 19, 2021
In the current low rate environment, fixed income investors don’t have time for any monkey business. When it comes to seeking income sources, one promising place to look is business development companies (BDCs) via the
BIZD gets down to business by seeking to replicate as closely as possible, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the MVIS® US Business Development Companies Index. The fund normally invests at least 80% of its total assets in securities that comprise the fund’s benchmark index.
The index is comprised of BDCs. BDCs are vehicles whose principal business is to invest in, lend capital to, or provide services to privately-held companies or thinly traded U.S. public companies. Getting financing nowadays can be tough through traditional means like big banks. BDCs help fill the gap.
communicate portfolio construction thoughts with investors on a
more systematic basis. In this
‘CIO Thoughts’ piece, our aim is to deliver
several topics in an easy-to-read language, which hopefully leads to more fruitful conversations and meetings with our investors.
Before discussing Astoria’s ‘
CIO Thoughts’, we wanted to alert you that Astoria’s Quantitative Strategist, Nick Cerbone, has updated our
Portfolio Construction Dashboard, which is stored here (click here; if you don’t have access, please let us know and we will sign you up). All of our models, fact sheets, and in-depth tools are stored on this dashboard. It’s definitely the one report we are
“VYMI goes overseas in search of dividend income and what it does is it looks at the entire equity opportunity set outside the U.S. It takes the highest-yielding half of those stocks, and it folds them into its portfolio, weighting them by their market capitalization,” said Morningstar’s Ben Johnson.
Ex-U.S. developed market dividend payers often feature larger yields than their U.S. counterparts, an assertion proven by comparing large- and mega-cap dividend stocks from familiar dividend sectors such as consumer staples, energy, financial services and telecommunications.
VYMI’s Steady Approach
Many foreign companies tie payouts to earnings, meaning some ex-US dividend growers also have rising profitability. Those firms aren’t burdened by dividends and can sustain payouts.
February 19, 2021
Small cap stocks are still worth considering, and investors don’t need to take on added risk with quality approaches like the
ERSX selects the most entrepreneurial, primarily Non-US Small Cap companies, that meet the thresholds embedded in its proprietary Entrepreneur Factor (EF). ERShares’ ETF delivers strong performance across a variety of investment strategies without disrupting investors’ underlying risk profile metrics. Their geographic diversity enables them to harness global advantages through additional returns associated with currency fluctuations, strategic geographic allocations, comparative trade imbalances, and relative supply/demand strengths.
Small stocks have been hot for a while. They’re not flaming out anytime soon.