As it turned out, this past quarter was one that many investors, traders and advisors are glad to put behind them. The major markets, as the above table shows, were mired deep in red and many sector trends came to an end in January causing several whipsaws. It was the steepest decline in 5 years. This is not to say …
The Income Debacle
A few days ago, a retired reader asked my opinion on a variety of income funds since his goal is to supplement his pension. Most of the closed end funds he mentioned looked pretty much the same when looking at a chart. As an example, here is DDF: DDF pays a mouth watering dividend yield of 10.5%. It would be …
Sunday Musings: Sharing Investment Success
As you know from my weekly newsletter and published articles, as well as this blog, my investment preference is the use of a methodical and mechanical approach to investing, which eliminates emotional and irrational decision making. Trend Tracking (or trend following) has had its share of supporters for a long time, some who have amassed huge fortunes via fairly simple …
Painting Lipstick On A Pig
A couple of days ago, I posted about the obvious as to who eventfully will have to foot the bill if the Fed’s guarantee of JP Morgan’s purchase of Bear Stearns’ assets should prove to be a losing proposition. MarketWatch featured a follow up story about the Fed’s partnership with JP Morgan. Here are some highlights: The Federal Reserve has …
No Load Fund/ETF Tracker updated through 3/27/2008
My latest No Load Fund/ETF Tracker has been posted at:http://www.successful-investment.com/newsletter-archive.phpAimless meandering would describe this week’s market activity with 2 of 3 of the major indexes ending up lower. Our Trend Tracking Index (TTI) for domestic funds/ETFs remains now -0.73% below its long-term trend line (red), which means we are in bear market territory. The international index dropped to -7.02% below …
Who Is Liable For Fed Rescue?
Ever since the Fed provided an assist in bailing out Bear Stearns, I’ve been wondering who might be really on the hook if things go bad. The Fed in essence guaranteed some $30 billion of Bear Stearns’ questionable assets in order to persuade JP Morgan that this purchase was the right thing to do. Bloomberg reports as follows: Even as …