If you look at yesterday’s chart, and compare it to the one shown above, you will see a virtual mirror image of market activity, reflecting almost the same highs and lows in the S&P; 500. The markets crept higher in the early going, supported by better than expected November retail sales, but sold off after the Fed announcement. There were …
Emerging Market Trends
While no trend will last forever, emerging markets have been on a tear for most of this year as the 1-year chart above shows. There was a brief interruption in upward momentum when the S&P; 500 dropped over 13% during the May/June period. More recently, since the Fed announced its Quantitative Easing (QE-2) program in early November, emerging market ETFs …
Sunday Musings: Retirement Thoughts
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 …