This Week's ETF Winners & Losers
Exchange-traded funds tracking financial stocks were, once again, among the worst performers of the week amid heightened recessionary chatter and more hints that the sector's worries are far from over.
The
Ultra Financials ProShares
(UYG) - Get Report
ETF slid 8.6% for the week, the
iShares Dow Jones U.S. Financial Services
(IYG) - Get Report
fund lost 5.1%, and the
Financial Select Sector SPDR
(XLF) - Get Report
surrendered 4.7%.
The financial space -- which has been the crux of the market's travails over the past few months -- swallowed more poison earlier this week. The sector endured a confluence of dreary comments from former
Federal Reserve
chairmen Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker and the International Monetary Fund as well as downbeat minutes from the Fed's last gathering in March. Further,
Lehman Brothers
(LEH)
disclosed that, last quarter, it was forced to liquidate three deteriorating funds worth around $1 billion. The stock was off 9.5% for the week.
General Electric's
(GE) - Get Report
bleak results Friday didn't help financials, either, as the corporate bellwether's woes were largely blamed on its financial-services operations. GE shares lost 14.7% over the past five sessions. Earlier in the week shipping services firm
UPS
(UPS) - Get Report
, in another bad sign for the state of the economy, sliced its first-quarter outlook, and shares lost 4.7% for the week.
UPS also helped pull down the
iShares Dow Jones Transportation Average
(IYT) - Get Report
, which has sunk 3.3% since Monday.
Bundled securities tracking retailers did poorly, as well, despite a guidance boost from
Wal-Mart
(WMT) - Get Report
, the world's biggest retailer. The behemoth also reported a lower-than-expected same-store sales drop for March, and a number of other retailers posted big comps declines in that month.
Furthermore, the University of Michigan ended the week by posting miserable preliminary consumer-confidence numbers for April. The
PowerShares Dynamic Retail
(PMR) - Get Report
ETF slid 4.8% for the week, and the
SPDR S&P Retail
(XRT) - Get Report
fell 6.1%.
Among scarce winners were oil-and-energy ETFs. Earlier in the week, crude oil futures hit a new intraday high on the same day that crude stockpiles took a slide, and gas prices at the pump were breaking records, as well.
Over the past five sessions,
United States Oil
(USO) - Get Report
, the
PowerShares DB Oil
(DBO) - Get Report
and the
PowerShares DB Energy
(DBE) - Get Report
funds climbed 4.2% or more.