Technology exchange traded funds have been in the spotlight this week following Apple’s (NasdaqGS: AAPL) fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report on Tuesday. As usual, Apple’s earnings highlighted Apple-heavy ETFs including the Technology Select Sector SPDR (NYSEArca: XLK) and the Vanguard Information Technology ETF (NYSEArca: VGT).
Sam Stovall, U.S. equity strategist at S&P Capital IQ, calculated that since 1990, the S&P 500 index has averaged a 4.9% gain in the fourth quarter, reports Josh Lipton for CNBC.
Since 1995, the technology sector has returned an average 4.6% and rose 71% of the time, or five out of seven instances, during the last three months, according to Kensho. XLK tracks the S&P Technology Select Sector Index. VGT reflects the performance of even broader MSCI US Investable Market Index of information technology companies.
The tech sector dropped about 4.1% during the third quarter, its worst performance since the fourth quarter of 2012.
However, the tech sector could be turning around. As a growth-centric sector, the area typically leads during a market rally. Consequently, in the fourth quarter, technology stocks may see a boost as money managers shift money to winning stocks and away underperformers before the year-end.
XLK, the largest tech sector ETF “is comprised of 76 holdings from across the technology sector each with a weighted average market capitalization of $270 billion. The fund is extremely popular with investors given its liquidity a low gross expense ratio of 0.14%. Taking a look at the chart, you can see that see that the price recently broke above a key level of resistance shown by the dotted trendline. This bullish gap higher is a clear signal that the trend is in favor of the bulls and at this point any would expect the upward momentum to continue,” according to Investopedia.