I’ve been reworking the stock holdings within the income allocation of portfolios all year. To offer some background, I break portfolio allocations into two segments, Growth and Income, and fit clients based on the amount of volatility that’s appropriate for their retirement/financial plan. These days, “Income” oriented investments don’t offer much in the way of…
Recent Market Musings
China The Chinese stock market has probably been the hottest market over the last year. While exciting for the time being, I don’t trust it one bit. The Chinese economy has been supported by an unsustainable increase in credit the past few years and the bubble has the potential to pop at any moment. There…
Reflections from the Week
It seems like the only thing I hear in the financial media these days is talk about when the Fed will raise interest rates but I think people are missing the forest for the trees. The US dollar continues to surge higher and by letting it rise, effectively the Fed is already tightening. I don’t…
Why the Volatility is only just Beginning
Tomorrow morning the European Central Bank (ECB) will make an announcement on monetary policy and will most likely announce the beginning of their own Quantitative Easing. I was a bit skeptical of this until last week when the European Court of Justice made it now legal for the ECB to engage in Quantitative Easing and…
Why there is Confusion in the Markets Right Now
Stocks have had a pretty bumpy ride over the last three weeks, with the S&P 500 falling exactly 10% from the September 19th high. The S&P 500 cash index, which is what you see quoted on TV and in the paper, fell almost 9.9% but the S&P 500 futures fell exactly 10.0% and turned on…
The Difference between Individual Bonds & Bond Funds
I received a question after my last post regarding bonds and just to clarify, I was referring to owning individual bonds. The person that asked the question, like many investors, has exposure to bonds in his portfolio via bond funds which can be a mutual fund, exchange traded fund (ETF) or closed-end fund, so I…
Interesting Initial Reaction to this Week’s Fed Meeting
Wednesday was new Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s first meeting at the helm. Stocks sold off pretty hard after the announcement but rebounded yesterday. Neither action was very surprising; stocks are still quite over-extended and investors seem to have a quick trigger finger looking for any reason to sell and take profits. At the same…
Where Will Stocks Go Moving Forward?
It was an odd week for the stock market and I’m not yet seeing the things I would like to for confirmation that stocks should move higher. We’ll see where things take us in the week ahead. Here’s a video discussing the the things I’m watching: I hope everyone has a great weekend…