Bottom Up to Top Down

After yesterday’s rough ride in the U.S. equity markets, today feels like the perfect time to (re)introduce you to The Fundcaster—our unique tool for analyzing and scoring popular equity ETFs. Covering nearly 50 ETFs, The Fundcaster draws insights from The Buycaster and The Bankcaster, rolling them up into a single Investability Score for each ETF.

As of last night’s close, here are the top five:

As a reminder, Investability Scores quantify how rational it is to believe that a stock or ETF can deliver 80% cumulative return in 5 years (12.5% annualized or 10% post-tax). Generally, ETFs will never score as high as some single stocks which have a perfect score of 10.0, because let’s face it: all ETFs have some bad apples (no pun intended). This brings us to a couple of key points about The Fundcaster…

1. Think in terms of relative value, not absolute value.
If you’re looking for safer pockets in global equity markets, The Fundcaster is incredibly useful. However, its Investability Scores aren’t standalone signals—they’re roll-ups from The Buycaster and The Bankcaster. The key is to compare scores relative to the S&P 500, the most widely used benchmark for passive investing. Our “high,” “ok,” and “low” ratings are based on this comparison, but you can also compare multiple ETFs against each other to identify opportunities.
 
2. Please don’t use it for market timing.
Trying to time the market is a risky game. We don’t know any fund manager or trader with a proven track record of consistently beating the equity market by perfectly predicting peaks and troughs. Some get lucky now and then, but many get burned. We prefer to sleep well at night, which means sticking with dollar-cost averaging and staying invested for the long haul.

It’s tough out there, but you can stay sane and safe with our tools and dashboards. Think of them as your voice of reason, your consigliere, or your co-pilot. All three—The Buycaster, The Bankcaster, and The Fundcaster—are built on two pillars: sanity and safety.