Mark Hulbert: New Value Line ETF begins trading - Financial - Financial Services - Markets/Exchanges - Mutual Funds - Market News

Wouldn't you know the timing for a new fund is almost exactly wrong? Certainly not from the standpoint of will it sell but from the standpoint that it is the wrong time to buy. The Value Line index includes a lot of small value stocks. We are moving to a time when large growth stocks will outperform small value stocks. The creation of a Value Line fund will allow the large institutional investors the opportunity to "dump" their small cap stocks onto the consuming public.

Typically specialized funds such as this come out well before the actual top. The Gold funds came out more than a year ago and the final top is yet to be seen. By the way, real estate and small value stocks have a higher r square than does real estate and big cap growth. The real estate bubble that has been discussed ad nauseum has already popped in one sense. The rate of increase in home prices has dropped from an incredible pace to a more sustainable pace. Home prices will continue to increase in most parts of the country for several more years but the rate of increase is going to slow in the same way that small cap value stocks are going to continue to climb at a slower pace than large caps.

The last week or so of the current rally has seen small caps beating the S&P. Again, specialized or sector funds tend to come out before the top. Investors should use market rallies to scale out of small caps and should buy large caps on the dips.