Al Thomas, author of the well known book “If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It,” wrote an interesting column a couple weeks ago on the subject of retirement, which offers some food for thought: PLANNING TO RETIRE The first question is when? Second question is will I have enough money? And third question is what will I do? Maybe …
Reader Question: More On Sell Stops
In “Missing the Point” I talked about the purpose of using sell stops, which is to limit downside risk and not to initiate a short position as one investor intended to do. I also said the following: If you are a very aggressive investor, you could work without sell stops and only use the crossing of the trend lines as …
No Load Fund/ETF Tracker updated through 12/9/2010
My latest No Load Fund/ETF Tracker has been posted at:http://www.successful-investment.com/newsletter-archive.phpSlow and steady was the name of the game as the major indexes gained moderately. Our Trend Tracking Index (TTI) for domestic funds/ETFs has moved above its trend line (red) by +5.12% (last week +5.89%) and remains in bullish mode. The international index has broken above its long-term trend line by …
Sputtering Higher
[chart courtesy of marketwatch.com]It wasn’t pretty yesterday, but the markets managed to sputter higher in the face of rising interest rates and a subsequent higher dollar. The bond selloff was a clear result of politicians having favored the Bush tax cuts over spending cuts. While in my view the extension of lower taxes in itself is a good thing, with …
Losing Steam
After briefly hitting a 2-year high yesterday, the S&P; 500 lost upward momentum, slipped, recovered but faded into the close ending up nearly unchanged. During the trading day, I was observing some intra-day charts, and the activity was painfully slow; it reminded me of watching grass grow. Nevertheless, it appeared to be a consolidation day, which is a normal occurrence …
Bernanke Fallout
The markets were not able to gain much traction yesterday as the major indexes meandered without much conviction and ended up closing around the unchanged line. Investors were still trying to digest Fed chairman Bernanke’s relatively gloomy outlook, which he presented on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” Just the fact that he sees unemployment hovering near record levels for some four to …