The SPDR S&P Insurance ETF (NYSEArca: KIE) hit an all-time high today. What’s interesting about that is that KIE is the only fund in Friday’s thinly populated ETF all-time high club that does not feature exposure to Amazon (NasdaqGS: AMZN).
Shares of Amazon are up nearly 16% at this writing after the company reported a profit of $92 million, or 19 cents a share, after losing $126 million, or 27 cents a share, last year. Sales were $23.1 billion. Analysts expected EPS of 15 cents on sales of $22.4 billion. The Seattle-based company forecast third-quarter sales of $23.3 billion to $25.5 billion.
That surge has brought Amazon’s market value to about $260 billion, or nearly $30 billion above Wal-Mart’s (NYSE: WMT) market capitalization. So it’s fairly obvious that Amazon is lifting select ETFs, something we alluded to happening prior to the market opening today. [These ETFs Should Love Amazon’s Earnings Report]
The actively managed ARK Web x.0 ETF (NYSEArca: ARKW) enters Friday’s all-time high club by way of a 3.67% weight to Amazon coming into today. ARKW “invests in companies that are transforming every sector of the economy, thanks to Internet enabled innovation. These changes cut across sectors and are accelerating thanks to social, mobile, and local technological breakthroughs, which are transforming consumer and business behavior,” according to New York-based ARK Investment Management.
The ETF has surged 17.6% this year. Amazon has helped. So have Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB), Netflix (NasdaqGS: NFLX) and FireEye (NasdaqGS: FEYE), among others. Those four stocks combine for nearly 15% of ARKW’s weight. [ETFs for Game-Changing Stocks]
Three traditional consumer discretionary ETFs also hit all-time highs today. The Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR (NYSEArca: XLY), Vanguard Consumer Discretionary ETF (NYSEArca: VCR) and the Fidelity MSCI Consumer Discretionary Index (NYSEArca: FDIS) all feature Amazon among their top 10 holdings and as cap-weighted funds, it is reasonable to expect all will have larger Amazon weights come Monday.