Merger and acquisition activities have heated up in recent months and the niche spaces are in the limelight. After the telemedicine industry, gene therapy stocks jumped on the bandwagon.

It appears that growing demand for personalized medicine, solid investments and higher R&D activities can make genomics the next big thing in the investing space. We highlight a host of ETFs that investors can keep tabs on.

The challenge is to create a quality biotech index with a rule-based system, so the picking and re-balancing are handy and quick.

Investor-friendly, sector ETFs provide many options to gain low risk and diversified exposure to a broad group of companies in particular sectors.

The biotech corner of the broad healthcare sector is in the spotlight to start the New Year, as the new tax legislation has enticed U.S. companies to bring offshore cash back home, sparking waves of mergers and acquisitions.

Solar stocks are victims of the general misconception that oil price and solar market fundamentals are directly related to each other. Further, weak earnings from a few industry bellwethers weighed on solar ETFs.

Sector-specific issues like increasing political and media focus on high price tags for new drugs and the changing competitive scenario have been weighing on biotech stocks over the last few quarters but the sector’s fundamentals remain strong.

It has been a highly eventful year for the biotech sector thanks to mergers and acquisitions (M&A), deals galore, pricing controversy, stretched valuations and the usual pipeline updates. The NASDAQ Biotechnology index is up 7.7% YTD.

Biotech stocks were able to keep their rally intact until March 25, breezing past the nearly flat broader market indices. However, on March 25, major biotechnology indexes were off over 4%, leading the Nasdaq Composite Index to see its biggest ‘one-day loss in nearly a year’.

The biotech sector stood out last year and the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index delivered a stellar 34% return for 2014.

The NASDAQ Biotechnology index delivered a stellar 34% return in 2014 – emerging as the biggest winner among all the sectors.

Bulls showed renewed backbone last week and drew a line in the sand for the bears, buying with gusto into weakness as I suggested they would.