Top-Performing ETF Areas of Last Week

Wall Street delivered a downbeat performance last week. The S&P 500 lost 0.6%, the Dow Jones retreated about 0.4%, and the Nasdaq Composite plunged 2.1%. The renewed tensions in the Middle East, an oil price rally, solid big bank earnings, tech crash amid AI investment worries were the key highlights of the last week.

Middle East Tensions

The U.S.-Iran war intensified in recent days, while shipping disruptions are worsening across two of the world's most important oil transit routes. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has plunged, and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea has threatened another key export corridor for Middle Eastern crude.

As a result, Brent crude ETF United States Brent Oil Fund LP BNO added 8% last week. However, the United States paused its strikes against Iran over the weekend. Iran reportedly said it would halt its attacks as long as the U.S. pause in hostilities remains in effect, as quoted on CNBC.

Solid Big Bank Earnings

Geopolitical tensions remain in place, and markets have been on a volatile ride — yet the largest banks of the United States continued to post strong results. While retail investors may find the volatility unsettling — particularly those needing to liquidate equities or seeking quick gains — Wall Street banks are benefiting.

Strong trading activity, resilient consumer spending, healthy loan demand, good capital market activity, higher investment banking fees and a pickup in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven capital markets activity have fueled optimism.

Tech Crash

Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF MAGS lost about 6% last week as renewed worries related to the payoffs of massive AI investments bother investors. Alphabet and Tesla bore the brunt of the decline.

Although Alphabet delivered strong revenue growth and highlighted a growing cloud-services backlog, investors focused on its sharply higher AI infrastructure spending, triggering a sell-off in the stock.

Tesla also faced the same concern. Ross Gerber of investment firm Gerber Kawasaki said Elon Musk faces a long road in turning Tesla Inc.'s Optimus into a commercial success, noting that humanoid robots remain difficult to develop and are unlikely to generate meaningful revenue anytime soon, per Benzinga, as quoted on Yahoo Finance.

Winning ETF Areas of Last Week

Below we highlight a few winning exchange-traded fund (ETF) areas of last week.

Invesco DB Oil Fund DBO – Up 10.5%

The DBIQ Optimum Yield Crude Oil Index Excess Return Index is a rules-based index composed of futures contracts on Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI) and is intended to reflect the performance of crude oil. The fund charges 73 bps in fees.

Global X Gold Explorers ETF GOEX – Up 7.2%

The underlying Solactive Global Gold Explorers & Developers Total Return Index is a free float-adjusted, liquidity-tested and market capitalization-weighted index that is designed to measure broad-based equity market performance of global companies involved in gold exploration. The fund charges 65 bps in fees.

CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF WGMI – Up 6.5%

The CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF WGMI seeks to provide exposure to companies that derive a significant portion of their revenue or profits from Bitcoin mining operations or from providing specialized hardware, software and services that support the Bitcoin mining ecosystem. The fund charges 75 bps in fees.

Global X Blockchain ETF BKCH – Up 4.8%

The underlying Solactive Blockchain Index provides exposure to companies that are positioned to benefit from further advances in the field of blockchain technology. The fund charges 50 bps in fees.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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Source Zacks-com