FTSE Tracker Reigns Supreme

US stocks notched their second consecutive weekly decline last week, with shares of big banks falling on Friday after disappointing reporting from industry bellwether JP Morgan Chase clouded an already mixed outlook for the US economy. While the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 indices ended the day in positive territory, the two closely followed market gauges finished lower for the week following five volatile trading days.

The S&P 500, which finished the week down 0.3 per cent, last recorded two back-to-back weeks of losses after the World Health Organization declared the Omicron coronavirus variant a concern last year.

Disruptions from the coronavirus, surging inflation and uncertainty about when price rises will peak have made economic trends more difficult to forecast, analysts said. US corporate earnings season picks up this week, with more companies poised to report results for the final three months of 2021 and their outlooks for the coming year.

Investors said they expected to scrutinise how factors such as growing wage pressure, price inflation and a tight labour market were affecting executives’ financial forecasts. Companies listed on the S&P 500 index are forecast to post year-on-year earnings growth of about 22 per cent, according to analysts’ estimates. “If inflation heads higher then the fear factor really does come in,” said Aneeka Gupta, research director at ETF provider WisdomTree.

Having said that, here in the UK, the economy is doing surprisingly well. Political factors are kicking in again though and we’ll watch closely as to whether Boris Johnson comes under more pressure to resign. He has been resilient so far, and he does seem like the kind of guy who can plough through the odd scandal with a shrug of the shoulders.

So, with losses in the US and a few small gains made elsewhere across the globe, how did The Portfolio Platform traders get on? As usual, it was a steady week with many making returns of between 1% and 2% as they did the previous week. Worth a mention are:

European Index: 1.38%
Global Stock Basket: 1.58%
European Exposure: 1.74%
FTSE Tracker: 1.85%

Very solid performances. Once again, it’s interesting to see TPC’s tracker in there with a good return on the week. It’s always worth having a low cost tracker in a well-diversified portfolio.

4 good strategies, but 1, outperformed them all last week. Nasdaq Bias stood out by adding another 4.19% to their account. An incredible performance. In volatile US markets, we would always expect one or two traders to step up to the mark, and that’s exactly what they did.

Well done to them and all your accounts that are autotrading this strategy.

It’s been a good start to 2022, long may it continue.