I’ve been thinking a lot lately about portfolio construction, especially for retirees, in these computer-algorithm dominated investment markets which swing wildly every time someone from the Fed speaks. Markets today are unbelievably short-term focused and my clients aren’t paying me to day-trade their retirement portfolios. This means that portfolios which are built with a long-term…
Why I’m revamping our “Income” Holdings
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…
New Stock Buy for Income/Dividends
I’ve followed the agricultural industry closely for years now as it remains one of my favorite long-term investment themes and I think the fundamentals are setting up nicely to see things begin to improve for related companies in 2015 and beyond so I recently added a new position in Terra Nitrogen Co (TNH), a maker…
A Divergence in Stocks & Why it Concerns Me
Over the past two quarters I’ve noticed a pretty big divergence in the strategy that companies are starting to follow. A large portion (maybe 70% or more of large caps) are on the “return cash to shareholders” trend, while fewer and fewer seem to be executing a growth strategy specific to their business. I see…
Risk Management, Cash & Selling Put Options
(Today’s blog post will be a bit more advanced if you’re not familiar with stock options. However, if you want to learn more, I have a video series you can subscribe to on my company’s website.) With the uncertainty over the debt ceiling, I wanted to talk about the importance of cash in a portfolio…