Wall Street was upbeat last week with the S&P 500 (up 1.64%), the Dow Jones (up 1.08%), the Nasdaq Composite (up 1.29%) and the Russell 2000 (up 1.13%) returning decently mainly on earnings strength. Key U.S. indexes like the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones hovered around the all-time highs. The oil rally continued last week with United States Oil Fund, LP (USO Quick QuoteUSO - Free Report) gaining about 1.9%.

The ongoing earnings season looks upbeat with big banks deserving a special mention. For the 69 S&P 500 members that have reported Q3 results through Oct 20, total earnings and revenues are up 35.3% and 12.9%, respectively, from the same period last year, with 87.0% beating EPS estimates and 72.5% beating revenue estimates. The Q3 earnings and revenue growth rates, and the EPS and revenue beats percentages for these 69 index members are above historical averages (read: Dow Jones Sets New All-Time High: More Upside for ETFs?).

The benchmark U.S. treasury yield hit as high as 1.68% on Oct 21 while it started the week on 1.59% yield. No wonder, rising rates boosted financial ETFs last week, most of which are hitting a new 52-week high.

Against this backdrop, below we highlight a few ETFs that gained handsomely last week.

ETFs in Focus

Simplify Volt Pop Culture Disruption ETF – Up 10.41%

Since COVID-19 fear has not gone away yet, the stay-at-home option of media and entertainment has been a winning one (read: 5 ETFs Worth Your Attention as Delta Variant Continues to Spread).

The Simplify Volt Pop Culture Disruption ETF looks to concentrate in those few disruptive companies poised to dominate the new era of media and then enhance the concentrated exposures with options. The fund charges 95 bps in fees.             

Advisorshares Dorsey Wright Alpha EW ETF – Up 8.86%

This ETF is active and does not track a benchmark. The fund targets the strongest relative strength growth companies in the strongest trending sectors. Industrials (34.8%), Information Technology (37.9%) and Real Estate (27.2%) are the top three sectors of the fund.     

First Trust IPOX Europe Equity Opportunities ETF (FPXE Quick QuoteFPXE - Free Report) – Up 8.61%

Europe's IPO market has been on a tear lately, despite any push from SPAC deals. There was no European SPAC deals since July, per Refinitiv data, while the number of third-quarter IPOs hit the highest level since 2007. Amount raised in European IPOs was highest since 2011, per Reuters.

The underlying IPOX 100 Europe Index is a market cap weighted index that measures the performance of recent European initial public offerings from the IPOX Global Composite Index. The fund charges 70 bps in fees.

Kraneshares California Carbon Allowance ETF (KCCA Quick QuoteKCCA - Free Report) – Up 7.39%

The KraneShares California Carbon Allowance ETF provides targeted exposure to the California Carbon Allowances (CCA) cap-and-trade carbon allowance program. KCCA is benchmarked to the IHS Markit Carbon CCA Index, which tracks the most traded CCA futures contracts. As a part of the KraneShares suite of carbon ETFs, KCCA provides a new vehicle for participating in the price of carbon and hedging risk while supporting responsible investing and ESG goals. The fund charges 79 bps in fees.

Global X MSCI China Real Estate ETF – Up 6.68%

China’s Evergrande is on its way to avert default as property developer reportedly paid off bond interest. Evergrande reportedly remitted $83.5 million interest payment on Evergrande’s March 2022 offshore bond to a trustee account at Citibank on Thursday - as earlier reported on Friday by state-backed Securities Times - allowing it to pay all bondholders before the payment grace period expires on October 23.

This has charged up the ailing real estate sector of China. Evergrande missed four other coupon payments in September and October, which hit the Chinese real estate space hard lately.  The fund charges 66 bps in fees.