Related: 3 Strategic Reasons Advisors Should Adopt Factor-Based ETFs
While telecom and cable providers have long battled for share of communications spending in the household, increasingly social media companies Facebook and Twitter, as well as Google/YouTube, have been increasingly competing with media companies, not only for advertising dollars, but also for content from licensing to developing premium content. Meanwhile, according to CFRA equity analyst Scott Kessler, Akamai Technologies develops and provides solutions that accelerate and secure content and application delivery via the Internet and mobile. Key partners have included media and telecom companies. Further Kessler notes that Video game developers license content from media companies for games, and increasingly have been using their own intellectual property for more traditional media. For example, a Candy Crush TV show recently debuted on CBS.
CFRA thinks that ETF investors will need to understand the exposure of their sector ETFs are not as simple as the name suggests. For example, while Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight Information Technology (RYT) holds only tech stocks such as Facebook and Twitter, XLK also includes telecom stocks such as AT&T and Verizon.