It could have been a lot worse yesterday but, as we’ve seen quite often lately, a last hour buying spree limited the risk of a nasty slide. Despite Fed Chairman Bernanke’s rhetoric that the recession will end this year, the markets seemed to ignore his words of encouragement. The main focus this week will remain on Friday’s employment numbers. The …
Domestic Buy Signal Generated
Given this week’s run-up, the markets held up well today and pushed our domestic Trend Tracking Index (TTI) clearly above its long-term trend line by +1.30%. This is where the rubber meets the road, which means that a Buy Signal for broadly diversified domestic equity funds/ETFs has been generated. For tracking purposes, the effective date will be tomorrow, June 3, …
Almost There
Today’s market activity pushed the major indexes higher and with it our Trend Tracking Indexes (TTI). The domestic TTI has now crossed its long-term trend line by +0.97%. I will wait another day to see if this was just a one day pop followed by a drop on Tuesday before declaring this a new Buy signal. The domestic TTI only …
Sell Stops Revisited
Trailing sells stops are an important part of trend tracking in order to protect capital by guarding against vicious long-term trend changes such as we’ve seen last year. Common sense would dictate that any investment approach should incorporate some kind of an exit strategy but, unfortunately, most investors and advisors have not caught on to that simple bit of investment …
Sunday Musings: Too Good To Be True?
Especially in the investment arena, you are bombarded with opportunities that many times sound too good to be true. Even sophisticated investors can fall prey to the likes of Bernie Madoff, who squandered some $50 billion of clients’ money. Pyramid schemes will continue to work most of the time, because they are focused on investor greed and/or ignorance along with …
Trouble In Bond Paradise?
Interest rates have been going up and have affected not only mortgage rates but U.S. Treasuries and bond funds as well. Reader Eric was concerned about his bond index fund holdings in his 401k as he read Kiplinger’s “A Tipping Point In Bonds:” A 27-year-long bull market in bonds is over and a brutal bear market is under way, says …