This Week's ETF Winners and Losers
12/21/07 - 04:37 PM EST
Robert Holmes
Exchange-traded funds tracking financial names were among the few losers in a banner week on Wall Street.
Disappointing earnings and more writedowns held the financial ETFs back. For the week, the First Trust Financial AlphaDex (FXO Quote - Cramer on FXO - Stock Picks) ETF was lower by 2.7% to $15.69. The iShares S&P Global Financials (IXG Quote - Cramer on IXG - Stock Picks) ETF eased 0.4% to $82.02. The Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF Quote - Cramer on XLF - Stock Picks) ETF lost 0.1% to $29.33. On Wednesday, Morgan Stanley (MS Quote - Cramer on MS - Stock Picks) reported a fourth-quarter loss of $3.61 a share and said it had to write down the value of its mortgage-related assets by $9.4 billion. The following day, Bear Stearns(BSC Quote - Cramer on BSC - Stock Picks) posted a quarterly loss, the first in the company's history, due to a $1.9 billion writedown from mortgage-related losses. Goldman Sachs (GS Quote - Cramer on GS - Stock Picks) handily beat Wall Street's fourth-quarter earnings and revenue estimates on Tuesday, but still finished lower for the week. Additionally, Standard & Poor's cut its credit outlook Wednesday for MBIA (MBI Quote - Cramer on MBI - Stock Picks) and Ambac (ABK Quote - Cramer on ABK - Stock Picks) to negative from stable. On the winning side, a blockbuster report from Research In Motion (RIMM Quote - Cramer on RIMM - Stock Picks) boosted the Wireless HOLDRs (WMH Quote - Cramer on WMH - Stock Picks) ETF. The BlackBerry maker posted third-quarter earnings and revenue Friday that more than doubled from a year ago. The Wireless HOLDRs ETF finished up 2.8% at $73.70. Fellow tech giant Oracle (ORCL Quote - Cramer on ORCL - Stock Picks) reported a fiscal second-quarter profit that jumped 35% from a year ago, surpassing Wall Street's estimates. The Software HOLDRs (SWH Quote - Cramer on SWH - Stock Picks) finsihed the week higher by 2% at $44.37.
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