How the Economic Cycle Impacts your Portfolio: Shifting to the Next Stage

There’s a general playbook for investing when it comes to the macro-economic business cycle.  The cycle includes four stages: Reflation, Recovery, Overheat and Stagflation.  You might also hear other terms used to describe each stage but we’ll run with these because Merrill Lynch made this nice chart for us. Within each stage, investment assets tend…

Update on Kinder Morgan

I rushed to get yesterday’s post out and realized afterwards that I didn’t update you on what I was doing with the position.  In short, we’re moving on to greener pastures. This story offers some good investment lessons so I’ll provide a few more details.  Despite my concerns, I chose to stick with Kinder Morgan…

On the Lookout for Some Holiday Deals & New Year Trend Changes

The end of the year tends to bring some odd movements in the markets.  These can occur for a handful of reasons but most are driven by funds with short-term incentive policies and year-end bonuses.  Fortunately, their short-sighted foolishness can be our gain since we’re in the position of investing for the long-term. Many funds…