I have decided upon 301 stocks to add to coverage and about 350 to delete.   Almost all of the additions are in excess of $500 million in market cap and if you ever find that I do not cover a US headquartered stock that exceeds that limit, please send me an email with the symbol and I’ll evaluate it.  I have my fill of foreign-based stocks and ADRs so unless it’s a signifcant company in excess of $2 billion in market cap, I won’t consider adding it.  New stocks will be added when I give them their new signal and old stocks will be deleted when I change their current signal.   I need to do this for data integrity reasons, transparency, and to ensure the proper calculations for the HEDGEfolios Timing Indicator.   For the website to start showing a stock, I must have completed the fundamental evaluation and give it a new signal based upon my technical analysis.  About 20 of the new additions should have appeared over the previous 2 weeks of this year, but I had not yet completed their initial fundamental analysis until yesterday (note I spent about 30 hours doing the initial review on these stocks.)   Consequently, before these stocks are added, they will have to complete the signals I gave over the past 2 weeks.   Depending upon how long these recent signals last, it might be a few months before all the stocks are added.  Most of the stocks I am dropping from coverage have fallen significantly since I added them years ago and no longer exceed $500 million.   Given that most of these stocks have no (or minimal) analyst coverage, I understand that my deletions will be disappointing to some of you microcap traders.    If you are trading stocks like these, I trust that you have honed your own set of analytical tools and should not be relying on me or any other analyst.

Additionally, I am dropping coverage on 160 ETFs and am not planning to add more than a handful, if any.   The only way I’ll add an ETF is if it is unique compared to the other ETFs I cover and if it has a substantial “market cap” and is very liquid.  I used to be a fan of ETFs as a category.  However, over the past 5 years, their expansion has really turned me off.   There are way too many ETFs that cover the same baskets and they are very small in both “market cap” and dollar trading volume.   About 5 years ago, I noticed that I had to have two forms of technical analysis…1 for stocks and 1 for ETFs.   Over the years, I have mentioned how dislocated ETFs have become compared to their underlying stocks.   At times, I would see stocks changing direction up to 4 weeks later than their related ETFs and vice versa.   In the past six months, I have lost confidence in the fundamentals and technicals of many ETFs and for an increasing number of these products, I see great risks that are not being acknowledged by most of their investors or sponsors.   I recognize that my opinion on ETFs is not consistent with all the supposed experts and financial gurus that keep hyping this asset class (for their own profit).   If you are a fan of ETFs, I am sure there is an abundance of analytical tools (other than HEDGEfolios) to keep you happy.   Good luck with them.