Good morning and happy Sunday to everyone!

Just a handful of updates for you today…

First, no Sunday weekly market prep post today. Unfortunately, something unexpected came up that I need to take care of this weekend and I won’t have the time.

That being said, I don’t want to leave you completely hanging, so here are a few quick thoughts I have on the markets and ETFs right now.

• The market has demonstrated a fairly decisive “growth over value” bias to kick off 2025 and I don’t see that ending in the immediate future as long as President Trump can avoid some of his stiffer tariff inclinations and keep policy implementations at a moderate pace. The market had been pricing in pretty swift and sharp tariffs early in his term. We haven’t gotten that yet and the equity market has thus reacted positively. If that changes though, expect stocks to reverse.

• One area that’s starting to look interesting is Europe. While the region is far from in a good situation, it’s gotten some encouraging data lately, especially on the manufacturing side. For stocks to rally, there doesn’t necessarily need to be firm evidence of a turnaround. Just evidence a turnaround is near and/or imminent. Eurozone equities are up more than 7% year-to-date, far exceeding developed markets, emerging markets and Japan & China. If you want Europe exposure, the SPDR Portfolio Europe ETF (SPEU) is the cheapest at 0.07%. Otherwise, the iShares Core MSCI Europe ETF (IEUR), the JPMorgan BetaBuilders Europe ETF (BBEU) and the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF (VGK) at 0.09% all do the job.

• One of the ETFs with a top 10 net inflow year-to-date is the Janus Henderson AAA CLO ETF (JAAA). I’ve begun adding JAAA to some of my fixed income model portfolios since they add about 1% of additional yield over T-bills with almost no additional risk (they’re less liquid than Treasuries, especially in down markets where it can be more costly and that’s where the extra risk comes from). I really like this group right now from a yield/risk standpoint, but would be careful if credit risk starts rising.

• Milder tariff policy rhetoric and a rate hike from the Bank of Japan has sunk the dollar by 2.5% over the past two weeks. That’s been great for international equities, which are currently beating the S&P 500 by about 1%. Tough to say if it’s sustainable at this point since the catalysts (trade, inflation) are there for another move higher, but I think international equities need to start being considered again.

• Here’s the current Dividend Landscape report. As a whole, the group is underperforming the S&P 500 as the low volatility, value and high dividend factors have been among the bigger laggards. As I note in there, the current market environment has “brought growth & high beta stocks swiftly back in favor, leaving little opportunity for dividend payers. As long as Trump remains less committal on punitive trade policy, this might be a risk-on market for a while that leaves div stocks behind.”

A New Format For The Sunday Posts?

As I mentioned earlier, I’m considering a new format for what I write about on Sundays.

Given some current time constraints with other projects, I’m thinking about switching to something that offers some quicker nuggets on the markets and ETFs, similar to what was just done above as well as a top 5 or top 10 ETF list within a category that’s particularly relevant at the moment.

The thinking is that it might be more useful for ETF investors who want more targeted ETF coverage as opposed to the broader market or economy views that are available in so many places nowadays. The top 10 format could also help highlight some under the radar ETFs that may not necessarily be well covered elsewhere in the financial media.

In other words, it’s a potential pivot to something more ETF-centric. The Thursday posts would remain unchanged.

That’s why I’m hoping you’ll give me your preference in the poll question (click whichever version you prefer). 👇👇👇

If the vast majority prefer the current Sunday post as is, then there won’t be a need to change anything. Otherwise, I’ll reconsider in the weeks ahead.

If you have any more specific thoughts, feel free to jump into the comments below!