THE COFGBLOG ; My Union 401 Defined Contribution Plan Blog2012-02-12T04:19:52ZMeCopyright 2012, MeSPHPBLOGSuperbowl Sunday; Prolly Get To Doin' A Little Work On My Superbike..."There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring." Ernest Hemingway
To Choogle, Or Not To Choogle....That Is The Question... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUzl7_OpVLA They stopped by the radio station with the acetate off the metal master only hours old and the DJ spun the first two tracks, which were pretty good. Then he looked at the band and said, "The next one is pretty long... The band said,"Play it! It's a GOOD one." He dropped the needle on "Suzie Q". In those days I always had the reel to reel lit and ready to go whenever the radio was on because shit like this happened all the time. I had half of the first Creedence LP months before anyone else. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJe5sMBpnNY
Smoking Year So Far...Made The Most Of It Too.
This is the way I see the world. It saved me money and made me money. Bonds last summer and stocks this winter.
Something is goin' on. The chartz been sayin' so since October. The market has had every opportunity to go south since New Year, and it hasn't. It may be that US structural employment issues to the side, Europe has been in the news long enough for the long and painful and grudging solution to it has been discounted. And that the threatening flameout of China, inevitable or not, is still out on the horizon and still out there somewhere in the future. And that US corporations are as lean as they can get and will have to hire to keep the stellar profits that they have been making, or lose out to someone who will.
If the above is all true, as of the end of Monday, I'll be at 85% stocks and 15% bonds in the 401 and lookin' good. But, if I'm badly mistaken and Greece goes down in flames with Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and plunges all of Europe into depression, taking down a huge chunk of China's export business with it, and US corporations start firing instead of hiring,well, I will be way too long stocks at the end of Monday.
Nothing that wholesale selling won't fix. I've had a good run since October and I'll move quickly to protect it.
Post October, What's Not To Like? Aside from the 50% correction of the October move in November.... Kinda expect to see another pullback soon. Maybe a big one. If so, I hafta think about getting flat. 1080 to 1350 is a 'ways. Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered. But I'll react to what the market tells me. If the market consolidates on rotation or sideways action, I'll stay put.
Lemme Go See If It's Where I Parked It....And, Second Place Is First Loser.
Tues Eve
Stocks Holding...Bonds Rolling Over...Stayin' Put.
You Ahl Stay Tooned...Ya Here?
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120203-1903492012-02-04T00:00:00Z2012-02-04T00:00:00ZHey!!! Us Northern Californians Would Be Happy To Take Some Of That Rain From Those With Too Much. A Coupla Years Of Brown Hills And Lawns Inna Spring And Yellow Water Inna Toilets All Year 'Round Inna 70's Was Enuff, Thank You."The art of investment is the art of selling. Buying is a lesser skill and holding requires no skill at all." -- Harry Schultz
I'm up 28% over all of last year's gains... in the first month of this year. It's a balance of cashing in on the rips and buying the dips vs letting it ride and not making your move too soon. The buying is one part. Selling is the other. Let's see how this year works out. My original 60/40 from last year is now 76/23 as stocks have gone up. That is way rich for a bear market, which I believe that we are in and will stay in for a while yet. But every hurricane has its eye and ya can't pile water up at one end of the bathtub and expect it to stay there. I'm working with what the markets are offering.
We are divided, in America, into two classes: The Tories on one side, a class of citizens who were raised to believe that the whole of this country was created for their sole benefit, and on the other side, the other 99 per cent of us, the soldier class, the class from which all of you soldiers came. That class hasn’t any privileges except to die when the Tories tell them. Every war that we have ever had was gotten, up by that class. They do all the beating of the drums. Away the rest of us go. When we leave, you know what happens. We march down the street with all the Sears-Roebuck soldiers standing on the sidewalk, all the dollar-a-year men with spurs, all the patriots who call themselves patriots, square-legged women in uniforms making Liberty Loan speeches. They promise you. You go down the street and they ring all the church bells. Promise you the sun, the moon, the stars and the earth,–anything to save them. Off you go. Then the looting commences while you are doing the fighting. This last war made over 6,000 millionaires. Today those fellows won’t help pay the bill.
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120128-1301052012-01-28T00:00:00Z2012-01-28T00:00:00ZAll Hail Marx And Lennon...Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? -- Groucho Marx
Awesome week in the face of all that is darkness and despair. Now what?
Sunday Eve...
71% / 29% Stocks vs Bonds in the 401. STILL leaning toward the door, ready to go to cash, still earning money. As Cramer Says, "They don't put an asterisks next to your number." I'm nervous about everything but the price, and ready to bail if it actually starts to look bad...
The FED gooses the market....Steady as she goes... Still leaning toward the door.......
Stay Tooned....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120120-2221392012-01-21T00:00:00Z2012-01-21T00:00:00ZFirst Time In Years I've Dug Through The Fusion Section Of The Record Cabinet... AWESOME!!!!!!!“I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.” -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
The 401 is a "self directed" plan in which the participant applies a strategy and tactics to secure his retirement. Hope is not a strategy and "deer in the headlights" is a piss poor tactic.
Thursday, moved a little money from bonds to stocks. Movin' a little more tomorrow. Stocks are goin' up. Volume, sentiment, news, technicals and fundamentals don't inspire confidence. The only thing I like is the price action.. Still turned toward the door, leaning, with the weight onna back foot. I'm making money inna 401, but even more concerned wit not losing it. Check out this weekends chartz and tablez.
Stay Tooned...
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120114-1635332012-01-14T00:00:00Z2012-01-14T00:00:00ZFirst Week Of The Year. I Gotta Hangover Of Christmas/Holiday Cheer. Not All Hangovers Are Bad.... Many conveniently cite a book that they have not read, covering data that they have not reviewed, employing methodology that they do not understand, and reaching a conclusion that is not shared by many peers. This happens because the conclusions support a viewpoint that they already hold -- quite fervently. As a result, people are willing to bet real money. -- Jeff Miller
And, just like that, a Rory Gallagher video recording of excellent quality from a superb performance I hadn't seen surfaces and disappears. Oh Well. Here's one I, at least never tire of.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guL3xWi6rmg
No Change Inna 401... We still have holiday/1st of the new year sentiment and momentum. I'm up close to last year's high water mark and everything is OK. At least at this very second and at this exact location. I'm concerned , watchful, and less than fully invested and leaning toward the door...
The Crossing Wall Street link is from an avowed "Buy And Holder". He's right, as is Rev "Saving Souls From Buy And Hold" Shark. The key is capital preservation and risk management. So far, pretty damn good.
Time and price in the charts say that the bulls/dip buyers are in a place to strike fear into the hearts of portfolio managers over trailing the indexes right off the first few weeks of the year.
Fundamentally, I don't buy it. But standing in front of moving trains is a poor practice, regardless of whether or not they should be there in the first place.
Tues Eve
I'm on that moving train.... Caution is the watchword....
Stay Tooned....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry120107-1424202012-01-07T00:00:00Z2012-01-07T00:00:00ZI've Had Worse Years....I've Had Better Years Too..."Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries." -- James A. Michener
This is one the regular weekly posts on my website... That this is for the end of the year makes this one noteworthy....
This is the first table above reordered. The first table above is ordered to make data entry easier/match with previous versions/my mind set. This one is ordered by ranking the individual 401 investment funds from most lost over the year to most gained. There is info here.
Cycles, ya know? Lookit the chart below.
This is a fund I've had available in the 401 since late '04. Cycles. When the winds and currents are working for you, even in as treacherous and potentially gawdawful a place as the North Atlantic, you put everything that floats in the water to make what you can when you can. When winter comes, the currents go against you and the wind goes every which way, you take what you've made during the spring and summer and hole up someplace inland that's warm and dry and stay there doing stuff that makes sense until something changes. Look at the chart. You can see multiyear cycles as well as short term cycles. The time to pay attention to both the long term and short term cycles came this year.
So..... What I did this year was go big into stocks when the weather looked OK, like for the first three months. We are in a short term bull market off the financial crisis lows of 2009 and the recent trend is up. But I never got out of sight of the shore. We are in a long term multi-decade bear market. The major trend is down. When things got dark, I went to bonds and stayed there. When the weather looked like it was lightening up, end of the year, I went back to stocks but only part way, again with one eye on the sky and one eye on the shore. This was a short term play as written about over the last few weeks. Over the course of the year, I exposed myself to the upside and down side and made some and lost some. I was rigorous about cutting losses; the flip side to letting winners run. I gave back some from my high water mark, but ended up positive for the year and ahead of the default position.
Check out the table below.
If I'd picked the right one of the dozen investment funds available to the 401 and went all in at the beginning of the year, I'da made 1/2 of one percent more with much larger drawdowns, i.e. greater risk. The second best fund, I'da made 3/10s of one percent more. My account, managed by "timing the market" with available 401 investment funds (I prefer to think of it as "managed with capital preservation and risk management goals"), would have placed third out of 13, with very low exposure to risk for a good chunk of the year.
I've had better years. I've had worse years too. Not losing money can be really good. Making a handfulla Simoleans or a Drachma or two after the accounts are settled can be a major victory. Like here and now.
But it was a fair amount of work for not much return. Or was it? I have friends who've been in bonds since the crash. This year that worked really well for them. Last year and the year before, it didn't. The year before that, it was un-fucking-believable. Ya gotta view it in the context of your balance in the 401, the demands of life and family, and where you are in life, and what is going on around you. I just did the math and I'm down wid' it. I got some coin outa the 401 when three funds lost more than 10% and the very best fund made a return that looked like a old time passbook savings account.
Seventeen years and all of 4 bills made it to the floor and the one on selling a single piece of surplus government real estate passed. What a career.
"The unlikely elevation of a 76-year-old crank, with a few strange views and who has been rejected twice before as a presidential candidate, says a lot about the state of Republican politics." -- Albert R. Hunt / Bloomberg
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111231-0331262011-12-31T00:00:00Z2011-12-31T00:00:00ZMerry Christmas... Please Remember Those With Less Reason to be Merry..... (I was) At a Wall Street bar yesterday listening to a trader make an impassioned defense of Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life" and blaming the Bailey Building & Loan for the subprime crisis. -- Kamal Khan
I was at a party last weekend and one of the guests, a 0.05 percenter (aka extremely wealthy), made an impassioned speech against food stamps. And I quote him directly: "I'm against food stamps." When pressed on his logic, he simply stated "I don't believe in them." -- Mark Casa
VERY Tough Year To Make Some Money. Don't Take Much To Lead The Pack.... But Who Starts The Year Saying,"I Sure Hope I Break Even, That'd Be Really Nice..."
Ohh Yeah...... At this time of year, the 401 mutual funds pay a capital gains and dividend for the year for tax purposes. This looks like a big drop in the NAV for the funds on the order of five or ten percent. The loss is regained in a day or two when the share count goes up. I usually call this out but I forgot. Merry Christmas All!!!!
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111223-1356512011-12-23T00:00:00Z2011-12-23T00:00:00ZSeason's Greetings!!!! Started Shopping yet? Me Neither....Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -- Aldous Huxley
Hard work and not much to show for it....Better than the Balanced Pooled, way better than long stocks for the year, not nearly as good as bonds... long term performance is smokin'.
I've been long since mid October. it's cost me some money along the way. It was never a bet on the economy or stocks or a brighter future. It was a bet on the self interest of Wall Street where the toughest trading of a lifetime has hammered a lot of managers flat. There are two weeks left to make the year and keep jobs and bonuses.
Trust in a man's instincts to take care of his own self interests, rather than in his better side. He probably doesn't have one.
It's a way's back to my high of the year, much less past that.... We'll see....
Stay Tooned
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111218-0032532011-12-18T00:00:00Z2011-12-18T00:00:00ZSaw Bonamassa Last Night.The Wife And I Were As Impressed W/ The Drummer As Joe. Mostly Elderly Crowd; Almost As Old As I Am... A Few Were Convinced That The Program Was Their's, Coulda Been Worse... "No one that ever lived has ever had enough power, prestige, or knowledge to overcome the basic condition of all life -- you win some and you lose some." -- Ken Keyes, Jr.
Ya Win Some, Ya Lose Sum. If I Can Hold near A 4% Return For The Year, I'll Declare It A Win. I'll Be Ahead Of All But Two Of The 401 Fund Choices With Less Risk Since I Was Outa Stocks A Good Part Of The Year...
Starting to lean really hard toward going heavily to bonds...
Stay Tooned.
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111210-1525592011-12-10T00:00:00Z2011-12-10T00:00:00ZThe Markets Disappointed Those Waiting for Year End Melt Up Into Giving Up... Then It Blind Sided Those Who Gave Up..... DAMN!!!!!!!!“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
I've got ragged old tapes of The Hollywood Fats Band and the James Cotton Band at the Monterey Jazz Festival's Saturday Afternoon Blues show that is one of the top blues shows of my life...
As per last week, Sunday night I'd determined to gradually find my way to the sidelines on any kind of bounce, or bail all at once at signs of going off a cliff. Sunday night news of Central Banks actions to prevent a European bank melt down put me into neutral about 2/3rd long. Not half shabby.
I'm not all the way well, but I'm feeling better..... Having a buy out up 30% in a position in my trading account helped too...
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111203-1809352011-12-03T00:00:00Z2011-12-03T00:00:00ZBoy, I Sure Screwed That One Up....But ...That Was Last Night. From Zero To Hero And From Chump To Champ In 8 Hours..."The market is not a sofa, it is not a place to get comfortable." Jim Cramer
It's been a bad coupla weeks and I've lost concentration and let some things slide due to personal issues. I had some very bad news about one of my favorite persons in my life. And it's cost me concentration and focus on the matters at hand. It couldn't a' happened at a worse time either. My thesis for the year's end looks like it was wrong and I was set up long stocks when the markets cratered on the Euro news. I shoulda cut back or bailed a lot sooner but, knowing that there was gonna be bad news before there was good news, I stayed too long too long based on hope, a poor strategy. Damn.
My losses inna market pretty much pales in comparison to the losses in my personal life. That said, I've got responsibilities to me and my family for the future as well as for what will soon be in the past.....so....
It's Not A Sin To Be Wrong, But It Is A Sin To Stay Wrong.
So How Bad Is It?
I can fix this. In absolute terms I lost a chunk o' money in two weeks. Practically speaking, Not So Much. Year to date, the Balanced Pooled Fund is down a little over 1%, I'm down a little under 2% from up 4%, the best stock fund is down 4%, the worst stock fund is down 15%, and the Stable Value Fund is up 2% and the best bond fund is up 5%. My losses are not even a hiccup on the long term chart and I can fix this.
I'm going to cash/bonds and derisking within the restrictions of the 401 and in a market where everyone is leaning the same way and that may provide me an opportunity to undo some damage... Getting less long is the order of the day and the week, and I've never lost money since I began to actively manage my 401 and I'm not going to be stoopid about trying to keep the streak alive. I made money in 2008, but things looked so shitty then, so that going to cash was a no brainer; Hell, no brainers are my specialty. This year was actually a tougher call. Too choppy. But a nine percent annual return '04 to date, down a whole point in 2 weeks still ain't half shabby and I can live w/ that.
Late Sunday Eve: There is a hot "Italy (Europe) has Been Saved (Again)" rumor on the wires; Futures are raging higher. This may be a chance to get out higher and sooner than I had hoped.
We finally got a turn upward in the market, I'm still thinking of getting less long and doing it during a bounce is a better way to go. I gotta figure this out.
Thurs Eve. Still long, made a dollar, gave a nickel back... Balancing the possibility of a year end run up against the hopelessness of the confederated states of Yerup, the on going delevering of the population vs the wringing out of the debt excesses.
Tomorrows job #s will tell a tale. I should take the money and run.....
Soon... maybe.
Stay Tooned.
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111127-1951352011-11-28T00:00:00Z2011-11-28T00:00:00ZNot Yet Thanksgiving, Yet Holiday Season Heard Just Around The Corner.....Is It Me That's Wrong And Not The Picture? "Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'" -- Charles M. Schulz
So I'm still carrying way too much stocks in the face of some truly nasty sentiment, nasty potentials, and it's all based on the faith that the market is not the economy and if rich guys need it to be up, it will go up. Fear vs calculation and faith the the game is to some degree rigged. I may be right, I may be wrong, and I may change my mind. Stay Tooned....
Holding my own for the year vs any and all funds. I can be satisfied with that. Especially in this market...
Ahl Be Bach.......
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111112-1216272011-11-12T00:00:00Z2011-11-12T00:00:00ZHeadline Risk And 95% Correlation Of Stocks With The Headlines; An UnEnding Source Of Amazement And Delight..... Turn Out Delight....“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year olds life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves Orcs.” -- John Rogers
Still about 60% stocks into the year end in the face of whipsaws, daily manic flailing about and darkness and despair in the news. It's working so far.......
Stay Tooned...
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111105-1732262011-11-05T00:00:00Z2011-11-05T00:00:00ZEvery Pitcher Tells A Story, Doughnut....... Lindsey Campbell; What do you do to fix the economy? Barry Ritholtz; I don’t know that the economy needs fixing. What do you do to fix night? You wait and it becomes day.
I started to go long onna 10th and I was up to 40% in stocks from zero by the middle of this week. I miskeyed an entry a coupla days ago and I'm way too long stocks now, but that hasn't hurt me....yet. There are cross currents under the surface of the market and I'm big time aware of the conflicts. I'm gonna change some stuff in the 401 and set up some contingencies next week, TBD.
I'm doing better than all but two of the funds out of the ten and I'm in good shape if stocks react well to the end of the year/holidays. or, I'll have to adjust if that allocation loses me money. Stay Tooned....
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111029-0236182011-10-29T00:00:00Z2011-10-29T00:00:00ZYou Can Lead A Horse To Water, But Unless You Can Teach Him To Swim On His Back, Ya Ain't Showed Me Nothin...... “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.” -- Seen At Occupy Wall Street Rally
Every Young Man Has Something He Hopes Never Sees The Light Of Day...Enjoy. http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/clover/vi ... 81731.html The two dancin' fools went on to be moderately successful as did one of the guitarists ... Can you figure out where?
I put some money to work this week... maybe some more goin' out on Monday. Details to follow....
Europe desperately wants the markets to go up. Wall Street NEEDS the markets to go up. The government sure wants the markets to go up. Despite EVERYTHING, the markets look like they want to go up. I sense a theme.... http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2011/1 ... -q4-rally/
I started to put money to work in stocks on the 10th. I had some in, I coulda had more. But I made a dollar.... I'm thinkin' about what's next.........
Stay Tooned...
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111022-1615432011-10-22T00:00:00Z2011-10-22T00:00:00ZBusy Weekend. I'll post as time permits...www.joefacer.com
I got some money back in stocks. ma y keep it there, may not. .
]]>http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111015-1417062011-10-15T00:00:00Z2011-10-15T00:00:00ZThe Tea Party Last Year And The Occupy Wall Street Movement This Year. Shades Of The Sixties And Seventies!!. Maybe A Third Or Fourth Party? Oh Boy! This Generation's Choice Between Perot/Iaccoca And Nader!! Louis Louis..... Me Gotta Go Now ...Isn't it strange? The same people who laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take economists seriously. --Unknown
The original Procul Harum LP was in mono and they waited a year to release the album after the single charted. You wouldn't have believed how the record industry was run in the 60's. We listened to Jimi for 6 months on English imports bootlegged in while they worked out whether or not getting the album in the US was an idea or not. Anyway, here's one of the Haight Ashbury's stoner anthems from Procol Harum.
I Don't Like Where We Are, I Don't like The News, I Do Like Bonds And Cash. We Are Teetering... If We Make It many Will Never Know How Close We Came. I'd Just As Soon We Make It. I'm On The Side Lines Until We Get Clarity....
The Chart Don't Look Good... We're still stick inna range, we're just barely 3/4s of the way through the range onna upside, not much upside left, lotsa resistance above, everybody HATES the volatility and a lot of investors have given up. We're prolly going into a recession (40% to 100% plus/minus prob so far)... Europe is gonna implode, China is slowing down, the entire US government is FUBAR, etc...
What the hell, I edged a little money outa bonds and inta stocks...
End of the year coming up... money managers gotta inflate the market if they're gonna be paid and the market ain't the economy. Sooner or later we will go up again, shame not to have a mindset that accepts change and reality when one acts on the other....
I'm started in if we the the usual year end melt up and I'm not so far in that I can't get out with only a little damage.
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry111008-1755032011-10-08T00:00:00Z2011-10-08T00:00:00ZForty Years Ago, I Didn't Understand Why All The Old Timers Ever Talked About Was Retiring. It Gets Clearer Every Year....Risk Management and Capital Preservation is often confused with Market Timing, and therefore is frowned upon. -- Barry Ritholtz
Marshall Tucker Was A Rock Band Before They Were Country. I Saw 'em Open For The Allman Bros New Years Eve Show Inna 70's. SMOKIN'.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEOV5vWfSgI
It's complicated. I got outta stocks going into the third week of May. By the end of June,I'd left 4% on the table vs if I'd stayed all in in the best stock funds. By last Friday, I was ahead by about 20% vs if I'd stayed all in in the best stock funds. If I was a set and forget kinda guy inna Balanced Pooled Fund, you could reduce those swings by about 75%, to 1% and -4%.numbers. Sounds like not a big deal. But when the swings are on the upside, those figures work the other way. So it sounds like a big deal. But it depends. Back inna early 90's, the mandatory minimum contribution was less, I was a traveler in another local where money was better, the reciprocity was lower, I contributed the minimum, and the money in the account was not enough to make the swings up and down very significant. Now, I'm back home, I've bumped my contribution up over the years, it's almost two decades later, and I got some coin in the account. Now, when the market is raging up or down, I can make or lose significantly more in a week in the 401 than I can at work. I see why some guys and gals are all in in the Stable Value Fund. They bust their balls and ovaries at work and make or lose in a week twice what they show on the check. Down sides can be vicious and you can lose inna week what took 6 weeks to make onna upside. That can make you crazy. But the swings now are the same as a decade two ago. It's where you are that makes the difference.
And where I'm at, makes me hyper. The wife's retired and I'm last one standing. I've decided to put my head down (motorcycle racing term) because the finish line is in sight. If this was a bull market, I'd check the balances once a week, and once a month, I'd allocate that month's contributions and maybe reallocate between funds a skosh. And if I'd been putting in the max for 20 years, I'd be in maximum conservation mode, maximally risk adverse. I'd have the job done already. But I got stuff left to do. And we're in a bear market. So I watch like a hawk. And like a hawk, I do nothing if there isn't anything there. And there hasn't been, nothing but down side. There will be upside, but I don't want to waste time and energy trying to move on something that is not real. A lotta lookin' and analysing and no action. But I'm months ahead of bein' all in in stocks and when the time comes, if I'm smart and lucky, I'll be all in for the up side. For the 75% greater gain of risk management that you don't think about when you hear the term "risk management".... I'll let you know as it develops...
Stay Tooned.... And see ya at the hall before the meeting.
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110930-1742352011-09-30T00:00:00Z2011-09-30T00:00:00ZI Guess I Do Kinda Look Like Jerry Garcia Used To Look.... I Got There By a Different Route...“The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.” -- Damon Runyon
What Part Of "Self Managed" Do People Not Understand? "Self Managed" and "Risk Management" Is Like "Carbo-Loading"... Ya Gotta Pay Attention To The Words....
Tues
I See A Lotta Downside Risk. And Not Much Upside Risk. We're Inna Trading Range. And I'm In Cash And Bonds...
Wednesday....
Thursday...
I got nervous after I did some reading. I'm still outa stocks. But now I'm 80/20 US Gov paper vs corporate/state/muni...
Stay Tooned
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110924-1717432011-09-24T00:00:00Z2011-09-24T00:00:00ZBlues An' New Orleans Piano Onna Turntable.....If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning. -- Catherine Aird
I don't like the news flow, I don't like the breadth, I don't like the macro, I don't like the unfinished business, I don't like the disconnect between Main St and Wall St. I like that bailing out in may was right, if a little early...
But if we get to 1230 and confirm a breakout, I'll have to figure what I don't like don't matter.....
But regardless of whether or not I end up liking it if and when it happens, I don't like it today.
Rev Shark and a lotta other guys are of the opinion that if we hit the 1120 to 1105 level hard, it won't hold. The next level of support is a long way down and the drop could be breathtaking... Lotta risk right here... And I don't see the reward.
When I look at returns YTD
I feel better and better to be outa stocks. I will buy some hand over fist at some point... prolly from sellers who wished they had sold them earlier and for more money.... At the right price, almost everything makes sense for a trade. But for a 401, I wanna buy stuff when the charts go from lower left to upper right.
Yup, bear flag in a bear market. Same old nasty downdraft in once again in progress. There is a bottom and the bottom somewhere below.
Hang on.
Closer to buying back in than I was... startin' to begin to think about it....
Rough day. prolly not the last....
I'll be back....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110917-1538382011-09-17T00:00:00Z2011-09-17T00:00:00ZYa Get One Life. Enjoy It While Ya Got It... Rest In Sobriety And Decorum When Yer Dead. WFO Until You See God, Count Ta Two....And THEN Hit The Brakes."The primary objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better." -- Jim Rohn
Bonds and cash inna 401a. Protecting what I got. There are old riders and bold riders. But there ain't no old bold riders. At least not without luck and brains and the experience to know the difference. I'm an old bold rider, and I'm parked under the overpass, waiting out the weather.
In the discussion that followed, the city officials asked a few technical questions, and Arthur Nusbaum expressed concern over a shortage of certified welders who had passed the city's structural-welding test. That would not be a problem, the representatives from the Department of Buildings replied; one of the area's most trusted steel inspectors, Neil Moreton, would have the power to test and immediately certify any welder that Citicorp's repair project required. Nusbaum recalls, "Once they said that, I knew we were O.K., because there were steamfitter welders all over the place who could do a fantastic job." Before the city officials left, they commended LeMessurier for his courage and candor, and expressed a desire to be kept informed as the repair work progressed. Given the urgency of the situation, that was all they could reasonably do. "It wasn't a case of 'We caught you, you skunk,'" Nusbaum says. "It started with a guy who stood up and said, 'I got a problem, I made the problem, let's fix the problem.' If you're gonna kill a guy like LeMessurier, why should anybody ever talk?"
We closed near 1190 onna S&P today. I bailed out 150 points higher about 4 months ago. Resistance is 10 and 70 points higher. Support is 70 and 90 points lower. If that support fails, like onna bad headline plunge, next stop down could be WAY down. And have no doubt; the market is inna headline driven bear market phase. We have to write off Greece. We have to worry about Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland. But see, if I knew enough to worry about Belgium, then I'd really be worried about bad headlines. We're at two and a half bounces. Two and a half.... That rings a bell and it ain't a good one.
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110909-2023512011-09-10T00:00:00Z2011-09-10T00:00:00ZThings Could Be Worse.... Therein Lies The Problem.....“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.” --Sir Winston Churchill
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110903-2137572011-09-04T00:00:00Z2011-09-04T00:00:00ZHenenah Henenah Henenah Hey, Hoy Hoy Hoy. Po jama People.... Frank Zappa "An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics." --Plutarch
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110827-1440002011-08-27T00:00:00Z2011-08-27T00:00:00Z There Is A Season, Turn, Turn, Turn.... The Quicker You Recognize That, The Sooner You Stop Plowing And Seeding Snow And Start Making Hay While The Sun Shines“Being wrong and losing money: that is part of the game. Being right and not making money: that is really annoying.” -- John Hempton,
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110820-1300072011-08-20T00:00:00Z2011-08-20T00:00:00ZI Know There's A Lot Of People Out There Who Are Thinking, "Please Dear God, Just Let Me Break Even On My Investments. I've Worked Really Hard And I Could Really Use The Money." Seems Kinda Sad....."The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable." --James A. Garfield
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110812-2344042011-08-13T00:00:00Z2011-08-13T00:00:00ZIt Looks Like The Next 5 Years Are Going To Be The "Interesting Times" Of The Old Chinese/Jewish/American Saying..... Google It.... It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. -- Mom
Bonds... Check out my website.... Asset allocation will save yer ass at times like this....
I've spent some time corresponding with Dan Fitzpatrick and this is an excellent example of his work. I'm not a regular follower of his service but he's got a lot worth listening to... http://www.stockmarketmentor.com/public/3264.cfm
So, if the Fed, which doesn’t issue credit and can print money, can be downgraded because it holds AA+ debt, then why and how in hell can the ECB, which holds hundreds of billions of euros of the junk debt of Greece and Ireland and insolvent banks not be downgraded on Monday? And the Bank of Japan? REALLY? What are these guys smoking? Do we now downgrade GNMA? Of course. And the FDIC? What the hell will repos do on market open? The NY Fed says it won’t affect anything. Don’t ask me, I just work here. And how can you rate France AAA? And still give AA or more to Italy when the market is saying they are getting close to junk?
It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. -- Mom
Horrible lookin' returns and chartz. I was all cash in mid May and I'm all bonds now.
I fear almost nothing, but I have a lot of respect for things that are dangerous. When handling guns, riding motorcycles fast, doing heavy rigging way up inna steel, or investing my life savings, fear has no place. Fear eats away at rationality and decision making and the ability to act. Respect the hazards and own the responsibility to do the right thing at the right time because it needs to be done, not because you are afraid.
...it's of stocks that I've looked at/wanted to track/ held/was gonna get around to eventually/ added and forgot about. I called up the list and today's action this eve to scope out how the day was.
DAMN!!! God help anyone still in the market.....
There's a bottom here someplace. It may be a way's away, it may be only an interim bottom and it may be good for only a short bounce. But stocks can only go to zero and we've come a long way in a short time. So there is the immediate short term relief of the cessation of falling in the near future. Unfortunately coincident to this is the sensation of augering into the ground. Then is the time to do something. That's why I went first to cash and then to bonds
We crashed Monday, Had an intense rally in the last hour of Tuesday, Crashed again Wednesday, And I put 15% of my all cash position back to work in 4 Funds this afternoon. it's an incremental buy at a price a damn site cheaper than back in May when I cleared outa stocks. That's how it is done...
I'll buy more mutual funds inna 401, but I mostly like to buy charts that go from lower left to upper right ala Dennis Gartman.
Threw few more dollars at the 401a. I'm up to 25% stocks inna 401. I'm a little nervous about today's buy and I'm ready to stop there or retrench back into bonds/cash depending. The markets are going crazy; Lookit the action for the last four days vs any one day during a non crash day. INSANE.
But if we all don't end up living in lean to's and driving around in Road Warrior vehicles, I'll look back at today's buy as a smart move. I'm just concerned that future buy ins may be a lot smarter. Or may be not....
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110806-1257252011-08-06T00:00:00Z2011-08-06T00:00:00ZGot My Mojo Workin'... Got My Mojo Workin'...... Jes' Doan' Work On You. McKinley Morganfield"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -- Woody Allen
Luckily, We Got Congress To Choose our Path For Us As Our Elected Representatives. I'm So Impressed I Could Just Shit.
I could draw lines and write stuff and do circles and arrows and numbers and levels and Bollinger Bands and andandand. But, look at the the chart and note the topping, the red bars becoming pre dominant and taller since June, the candlesticks bouncing off the 200 day ma again and the 200 day ma approaching the 50 day ma, the 50 day starting to roll over, declining tops, and the whole ragged last five months. It sez," Caution is the better part of valor....
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110729-2349392011-07-30T00:00:00Z2011-07-30T00:00:00ZMOTOGP!!!!!! GAWD!!!!!!Despite all of the talk about Democratization of investing, Wall Street primarily serves only the very wealthiest Americans. And that is a shame. -- Barry Ritholtz
Kickin' Ass in my trading account. I can go where the action is. And it is up high and in the corners. Cash and bonds inna 401a. The markets are squirrely, the economy is crashing after too long on stiimulus, and none on the horizon, and you make money when the risk/reward works for you. That ain't everyplace and all the time.
Waiting for clarity....
Wed Eve....
Clarity.... Seems clear to me....
Stay Tooned....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110726-2106022011-07-27T00:00:00Z2011-07-27T00:00:00ZI Listened To An Ex Senator Alan Simpson Interview On The Bi Partisan Deficit Report....Horrifying...I Think It Is Fixable. I'm Not Sure It Will Be....Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” — Michael Crichton
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110715-2345462011-07-16T00:00:00Z2011-07-16T00:00:00Z Politics? Control Alternate Delete. Works For Me. Some Times It's The Right Thing To Do...I am not a Democrat, because I have no idea what their economic policies are; And I am not a Republican, because I know precisely what their economic policies are. -- Barry Ritholtz
Moving over to some funds to bonds. The stock market has been big time decoupled from main street for a coupla years. Profits and prices have been up but I'm feelin' that the risk is to the down side, secularly, seasonally and cyclically. my aggressiveness is sated by what I'm doin' in my trading account and IRA's. I'm too old not to have come to appreciate discretion as the better part of valor when I suspect I may end up pissing into the wind. Let things clarify.....
MONDAY EVE...
Bonds and cash....'Nuff Said.
TUES EVE The S&P closed below the 50 Day MA. Now let's see if it is confirmed....
This could get bad. Not necessarily, .... but the possibility exists.
Stay Tooned...
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110709-1526582011-07-09T00:00:00Z2011-07-09T00:00:00ZDeath Is Nature's Way Of Telling You To Slow Down. Kinda The Ultimate Excuse. Until Then, No Excuses...."In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is." -- Yogi Berra
OUCH!!! OUCH!!! OUCH!!!! Smokin' week inna market. And I was All Cash. It stings, but it still may have been the responsible thing to do. Stay tooned and I'll explain why.....
I got out at 1 because the economy sucked, the Fed was through stuffing the bank vaults with cash, ya can't buy houses if yer unemployed, the banks make safer money buying treasuries than loaning money for interest, Greeks were getting their Visa card limits raised so as to borrow to make the monthly, China inflation and GDP was running into a slowing world economy, and the first glimpse of the next recession is occurring with 9% to 17% unemployment today ,depending on what yer smokin'.
It looked as expected at 2 & 3 & 4.
At 5, with everyone leaning the same way after 4 down weeks, the paint the tape game started early because of the end the quarter. Once the buyers lit up the tape, the scramble to get outa shorts and inta longs got frantic. the only red that week was end of the days locking in profits and after lunch onna 30th locking in profits.
So.... Tuesday. A lotta guys show up having missed the run up and waiting on earnings inna week or two. Do they (I) buy at the highs? Or do they say, "Aw RIGHT!!! A chance to unload at the prices I missed last month ...SELL EVERYTHING!! Is the stock market saying "Everything is better, we washed out the timid and it's UP, UP, AN' AWAY. Or is it saying " We brutalized the cautious, now let's break the foolhardy.
See, I just don't see how much has changed inna last month. Greece is patched over, but the German public is less and less sure about floatin' the rest of the EZ. The economy? Wall Street vs Main St? A recession on the horizon? QE3? Do i see the way home?
Dunno. But discipline trumps conviction. Price is truth and in my IRAs and trading account, I'm long and undiversified and even margined in the trading account. I can do what I wanna, when I wanna, All in long to all out in the click of an iphone. Last week was good But that is not the way it is with my 401a. There are rules and restrictions on what, when, and how often. I gotta move deliberately, like moving a building down the street, not a car.
This is the other side of a Bull Market, when I'll go 100% long the most aggressive funds and ride undiversified through the dips and hiccups. The down days or weeks 'll be nothing another few days or weeks of up won't fix.
This is a Secular Bear Market where the news is bad, sell offs are relentless and the updrafts are absolutely vicious. I gotta deal with missing the ups as the price of missing the downs. I'm in cash now and I expect to be in cash until I see a reason not to be...
The blast back to recent highs left a lot of investors on the outside lookin' in. That is a ready made cabal of dip buyers. The market can work off the overbought condition by going down and letting the left out in all at once at a lower price, or it can chop around and let the left out in a few at a time, correcting in time instead of price.
Or it can run head on into a a horrible jobs report or a Italy/Spain EU conflagration and undo the last week's launch upward all a once and continue down through the 200 day moving average.
Standing by in cash. I missed 80 points in 5 days, I ain't gonna chase it if I don't have any idea where it is going.... The market is going to be open tomorrow, next week, next month and next year too. I'm going to wait to commit until I have some clarity...
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110702-1504242011-07-02T00:00:00Z2011-07-02T00:00:00ZWeather Sure Is Strange.... Winter To Summer In Two Days. "If things go wrong, don't go with them." --Roger Babson
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110625-1320442011-06-25T00:00:00Z2011-06-25T00:00:00ZWe're Not As Far Down As We Were In March, But It Feels A Lot Worse.... Kinda Like 84 Degrees F at 7:30 AM Feels Different Than 84 Degrees F At 3:30 PM. Feels Like Something Serious Is Onna Way.....People only accept change when they are faced with necessity, and only recognize necessity when a crisis is upon them. -- Jean Monnet
Back Inna Day, KSAN was tryin' to stay afloat post Hippie Apocalypse and had tapped the Bay Area music community for an all live music weekend. One of the Fillmore Auditorium regular bands canceled out and Ronnie Montrose, who was putting a band together at the time, filled in on a coupla hours notice. He put on what would be his Montrose Stadium Rock program of the future in a studio using practice amps and borrowed instruments. This was in the pre-box-of-effects, Marshall-in-your-pocket-era. Sounded kinda like this...
Over the weekend, decisions will be made that will determine whether the world will relive the 2007-08 crash. The odds are not that bad short term. They are horrible long term and the downside outcome is nasty..... Stay tooned.
You start with everybody in cash or short. Then someone goes, "Hey, Waidaminute!! Who's left to sell and/or go to cash? What if the only thing left to do is buy?" With everybody leaning the same way, it doesn't take much to ignite a stampede the other way. It looks like a ferocious short covering and chasing runaway stocks rally.
The fundamentals suck. If the market confirms the launch, I will figure out what to do then. Right now, it feels too much like a bear trap....
Still all cash....
Stay Tooned.....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110617-2333532011-06-18T00:00:00Z2011-06-18T00:00:00ZAfter The Banks In Ireland And Finland Blew Themselves Up Through Too much Leverage And Speculation, The Governments Transferred The Losses To The Citizens. Then The Citizens Voted Themselves A New Government. Stay Tooned.... "The trick is to stop thinking of it as "your" money." —IRS auditor
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110611-0046192011-06-11T00:00:00Z2011-06-11T00:00:00Ztick, tick, tick..."When the plane is going down and the oxygen masks have dropped and parts of the plane are peeling off as you plummet toward the earth, that’s not the time to pull out the little card in the seat in front of you and say, ‘Gee, where are the emergency exits?' Everybody should have an emergency plan. The time to make these decisions is not when people are running around with their hair on fire." --Barry Ritholtz
It's June An' I'm still 99-44/100's stock free inna 401a. The Ivory Soap riff is kinda my emergency plan...Know What I Mean, Vern? (How soon until NOBODY can relate to a '50s marketing slogan or a Jim Varney reference?)
It's Not That We're Down 5%, We're Up A Whole Bunch Over The Last Two Years. It's That Sentiment Has Changed, The Season Is Against Us, And The Leaders And Tells Are Undercutting Our Confidence.
Thurs Eve... Still 99-44/100s % stock free inna 401a. Keep da bounce in perspective......
Stay tooned....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110604-0003012011-06-04T00:00:00Z2011-06-04T00:00:00ZBlogs; A Total Waste of Time? A Source Of Dangerous Mis Information?, Self Centered Self Gratification? A Dangerous Crowding Out Of Real Content? The Descent Of Erudite Intellectual Activity Into the Cacophony Of The Uneducated Masses? The Dilution Of Expertise And Knowledge?..... Pretty Much.Page after page of professional economic journals are filled with mathematical formulas leading the reader from sets of more or less plausible but entirely arbitrary assumptions to precisely stated but irrelevant theoretical conclusions. —Wassily Leontief
Friday was last day of the month and window dressing on light pre-holiday volume. Tuesday will be 401/IRA inflows and is usually up. It'll be a tell. I do some individual stock trading in a coupla IRA's and I look behind the curtain of the major indexes. I'm Ivory Soap (99-44/100's ) pure Stable Value Fund inna 401a. I figure to spend the weekend re-fettlin' the scooters for commute and Sunday Ride and prolly the track use this Summer/Fall. Less risk there than buy and hold inna 401a through the Summer.
I feel strongly about it both ways... Stable Value Fund is a great place to be when the market craters. But I'd much rather everyone had a job and a house and I could just go 100% in the most aggressive fundz. But ya play the cards yer dealt.....
99 and 44/100s pure stable value....
Stay Tooned.....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110528-1409142011-05-28T00:00:00Z2011-05-28T00:00:00ZYa Don't Slow Down, Ya Never Grow Old. ----- Tom Petty . . . . I'll Let Ya Know How It Works Out...."If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen." -- Joe DiMaggio
The End Of QE2, Rising Rates In Euro Asia, More Foreclosure Fallout, Lower Highs and Lower Lows Inna Stock Market, I Do Believe This Issa Theme Song For The Summer... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5IS45jT ... re=related
I'm one day from being out of the markets. What I'm doing is very very specific to my circumstances, personality, and history. Prolly time to write about it since ya can't make sense outta the action without a program.
We got a lower high and a lower low and a close under the 50 day MA. And I got to 99+% Met Life Stable Value Fund... Now I wait....
What it all means...
Going from 95 % stock to all cash was a good idea, well timed.
This is an example of having all your boats in the water when the wind and the currents are working for you (9/10 to 5/11) and seeking shelter when conditions get sketchy (last coupla weeks).
I can't tell the future, I'm not privy to the conversations at the highest levels of business and government, I don't have inside information, and I still have title to my soul.
I do, however possess a certain degree of perceptivity and ratiocination such that I can see what is in front of me and figure out what I'm looking at. That's all ya really need...
A "V" Shaped bounce looks less likely. I'm positioned for some serious down side. I may not get it. This might just be a brief pause while some temporary issues or seasonality are worked out. Or it could be the start of a significant down draft ending 10% to 25% down with a huge wash out amid chaos and despair...
As High Frequency Economics says today: “Underlying problems of over-borrowed nations are not fixed by lending them more money.”
Stay Tooned...
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110521-0225022011-05-21T00:00:00Z2011-05-21T00:00:00ZWhat Happens To The Party (The Markets) When The Fed Takes Away The Punch Bowl (Zero Interest Rate Policy [ZIRP] )?Just remember one thing: there are no good stocks. They all suck. Even those that are making you money are going to turn on you sooner or later. The only stock you should say anything good about is the one you no longer own that made you money. --Reverend Shark
Pretty radical change in posture over the last month:
I'm down from 90% stocks just weeks ago to 33% this weekend, to anywhere from 20% to 0% anytime this week depending on how urgent I feel the need to get ultra defensive is....
It's a risk/reward thing, see? I been way long for a while, since 9/10. I made some serious coin last year. But there's limits. Making money was easy between late '04 and late 2008. I went 100% stocks, checked everything every Saturday morning and every so often trimmed my allocation toward the hot fundz. I was onna sidelines in cash during the 08/09 WHOOSH down. I read enough to make me certain that it was all risk and no reward so I cashed outa stocks into the GIC. I made money by not losing money. I mean I actually made money in 08. Coupla hundred simoleans beats a gaping smokin' pit inna 401a. I was late rejoining the party in the spring of 09. I let a lot of gains go bye bye because caution had served me so well previously. I didn't really understand the new religion of free money from the FED until 9/10. But there ain't no true believer like a recent convert so I got wit it. All stocks alla time.
That was then an' this is now. I'm gonna play onna other side of the street for a while. Yeah, I'm really aggressive when it comes to reachin' out for gains. It's what I do. But I balance that by being really aggressive protecting gains. I risk serious losses by being all the way long when I think the markets are goin' up. If the market turns against me, I can get roughed up onna way out. The rapid trading restrictions means there is a price to bailing out inna hurry. Ya gotta be smart aggressive; listen for the sirens and move closer to the door.
The other side of that is that caution and getting out early can leave you looking in the windows at the party. Coupla three four days of upward whoosh watched through the windows can sting hard enough to make yer eyes water. But, Oh Well! you never go broke realizing gains and booking profits. And a few dollars left onna table can be thought of as insurance premiums or the cost of admission. I can live with that. What's made me cautious over the last six weeks is starting to wear on me. Time for some fresh air and a rest. Nothing clears the head and resets the game like the view from the sidelines.
There is nothing that will benefit your portfolio more than avoiding losses when the market is acting poorly. If you can keep from incurring losses in your portfolio as the market falls, you avoid the very unproductive task of recouping losses once the market is more favorable. James “Reverend Shark” DePorre
Few things are a bigger waste of time than getting back to even.
Damn!! Meant to lighten up onna stocks today. Forgot to enter the orders. Got 'em entered for tomorrow.
I'm a trend and momentum investor. I see damn little momentum and the trend looks to be rolling over. If I can pick up a majority of the up and miss out on summa da down, I figure that's pretty copacetic. Bull markets are a much easier environment to invest in and I'd rather just go long and hang on. But that's a recipe for disaster during certain times.... like this one.. .
WED EVE
Up day inna market and I'm pretty much a day or two from an all cash position (Met Life Stable Value). I'll write more as to how and why this weekend. For now, I'm banking gains from the first four months of the year, stepping back from risks I identify in the market technicals, acknowledging concerns identified by what I consider to be reliable and informed sources, and taking a breather. Should we get yet another "V" shaped bounce, I'm in a position to go long as fast as I wanna without triggering rapid trading restrictions penalties... If we go down big time, an all cash is a good thing indeed...
A coupla moves still to go, done by next Monday, and then I wait. A day, A week, A month, Or three.
Stay Tooned....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110514-1351592011-05-14T00:00:00Z2011-05-14T00:00:00ZAnother Day, Another Drachma... Or Simolean. Whatever.... "Money isn't the most important thing in life, but it's reasonably close to oxygen on the "gotta have it" scale." -- Zig Ziglar
We got higher highs and higher lows. We got a failed support line and a working support line. We got a dead cat bounce on lower volume after four days down from a multi year high. Beneath the indexes we have a WHOOSH down in commodities. We have leading stocks and sectors looking queasy. We got extended stocks without support after serious run ups. We have hot money bailing out of the trade dejour. We have risk vs reward, fear vs greed, and risk management vs asset allocation.
I've pulled back some serious coin. I'm more concerned about the return OF capital than the return ON capital.
If we launch higher Monday and don't look back, I've still got money inna game. just not as much as I like. I can fix that.
If Friday was short covering and bargain hunters seeing bargains compared to a week ago, we might continue/resume falling and this might be the non "V" shaped bounce/correction I've kinda been expecting. In that case, I still have too much money inna game. I can fix that too.
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110507-1613352011-05-07T00:00:00Z2011-05-07T00:00:00ZIF YOU ARE GOING TO FIGHT TO SAVE THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS, YOUR FIRST OBLIGATION IS TO SAVE YOURSELF. WE NEED NUMBERS ON OUR SIDE TO BALANCE THE MONEY ON THE OTHER SIDE. START BY MAKING YOUR 401A WORK FOR YOU. YOU FIGHT BEST FROM A FIRM FOOTING ON A SOLID FOUNDATION. HERE'S WHAT I'M DOING...I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position. -- Mark Twain
I went deeper into stocks on Friday afternoon April 29th...
“The Fed is still your friend if you are invested in cyclical stocks , commodities, and foreign currencies. If you eat food and run your car on gasoline, the Fed will continue to hurt you. If you are looking for a job, you may be wondering why it is still so hard to find one despite all the money the Fed has spent so far on QE2.0. If you are retired and living on interest from your CDs, then you are getting really squeezed between rising food and fuel prices and the Fed’s zero interest rate policy. In other words, the Fed seems to be doing everything to widen the gap between the Haves and Have Nots than to lower unemployment and boost economic growth, which remains “moderate” according to yesterday’s FOMC statement.”
-- Ed Yardini
Clickit!!!!
Cup And Handle. Three "V" Shaped Recoveries. One Failed Support Line And One Working Support Line. Two Confirmed Consolidations. These Are Bullish Patterns. The Market Is Soaring, And For For Exactly The Wrong Reason. But They Don't Put An Asterisk On Gains, Take Them Back, Or Discount Them... A Dollar Gained Is A Retirement Dollar For Me And My Family Whether I Hated The Economic Conditions That Made It For Me Or Not. So I'm Way Long And Not Liking Why. I'm Tagging Along With What Is Making The Rich Richer. I Feel Strongly About It Both Ways.... But I Can Use The Money.
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110430-1333182011-04-30T00:00:00Z2011-04-30T00:00:00ZThank God I Grew Up When Honesty Demanded That You Call Them Sugar Pops And Sugar Smacks And Sugar Frosted Flakes. And It Was OK That Quakers Made Puffed Rice And Puffed Wheat For Kids That Were Shot From Guns ....The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you become informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize that nothing is as clear and simple as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing. Being a man of action, I can’t afford to take that risk. – Calvin
"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" --John Maynard Keynes
Wednesday (4/20) Action looked good. I changed my mind about risk and added to my stock position at the end of the day.....
Here's where I stood Thurs AM allocationwise.... I picked up a few bucks onna day and I'm nicely set up for Monday....If the bottom doesn't fall out.
I may go deeper into stocks Monday. Here's why.
My risk management and capital preservation has cost me money every time I've gotten anxious and lightened up since the bottom in 2009. I've gotten back in some distance behind the "close yer eyes and hang on" crowd, but.... It ain't a sin to be wrong, everybody makes mistakes. It IS a sin to stay wrong. So I don't. Of course, my caution allowed me to actually make money in my 401a in 2008 when everybody else was bleeding from the eyeballs. One day it'll save my donkey again. I just gotta keep fear matched against greed an' get the balance right.....
I'm going deeper into stocks on Friday afternoon.
“The Fed is still your friend if you are invested in cyclical stocks , commodities, and foreign currencies. If you eat food and run your car on gasoline, the Fed will continue to hurt you. If you are looking for a job, you may be wondering why it is still so hard to find ond despite all the money the Fed has spent so far on QE2.0. If you are retired and living on interest from your CDs, then you are getting really squeezed between rising food and fuel prices and the Fed’s zero interest rate policy. In other words, the Fed seems to be doing everything to widen the gap between the Haves and Have Nots than to lower unemployment and boost economic growth, which remains “moderate” according to yesterday’s FOMC statement.”
-- Ed Yardini
Cup And Handle. Bullish Pattern. The Market Is Soaring For Exactly The Wrong Reason. But They Don't Put Asterisk On Gains. A Dollar Gained Is A Retirement Dollar For Me And My Family Whether I Hated The Economic Conditions That Made It For Me Or Not. So I'm Way Long And Not Liking It.
Stay tooned.....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110422-1527222011-04-22T00:00:00Z2011-04-22T00:00:00ZSoon. no time now... “Middle-class America experienced a lost decade in their retirement accounts, whereas executives enjoyed record compensation packages through the subterfuge of stock option programs. There has been a massive wealth transfer from middle-class America’s retirement accounts to the bank accounts of the privileged few. The social consequences of this wealth transfer bear scrutiny.”
The first couple of days of earnings releases gave us some so so reports that the markets did not like. Tuesday we got some better ones. We will see what the market sez Wed...
I reduced my exposure markedly as per the table above; 75%/25% money to stocks. It is a conservative allocation but not as defensive as I would be if not for rapid trading restrictions. We will see what tomorrow may bring....
"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" --John Maynard Keynes
Wednesday Action looked good. I changed my mind about risk and added to my stock position at the end of the day.....
Stay tooned...
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110416-1515292011-04-16T00:00:00Z2011-04-16T00:00:00ZBack To The 50's. Inna 50's There Was Open Air Nuclear Tests Inna Pacific, Strontium 90 Inna Food And Milk. Now It's 2011 And There Are Missing Reactor Cores And Explosion Dispersed Spent Cores And Iodine 131 And Cesium Isotopes Inna Food. Forward To The Past..."I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don't always agree with them." --George H. W. Bush
Speakin' O' The Past... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrABhokO ... re=related Brings me back to the night @ de 'mo when I watched pretty much the same line up do the two mandatory hour long sets that everyone did at the 'mo. I was about 30 foot from the stage leanin' into the sound...
Way Long Stocks. Eighty six percent plus. The charts are way extended and this is almost WFO into earnings. But I'm going into Monday with the shutdown postponed, earnings announcements about to start, the world's troubles rolled down to a simmer from a full boil and maybe I'll get a bounce to lighten up into.... Or not.
Stay Tooned...
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110409-1417472011-04-09T00:00:00Z2011-04-09T00:00:00ZRemember Back To "The End Of History"? Seems Kinda Silly In Retrospect. Poor Choices And Bad Judgement Writing History In Japan And Nothing Lasts Forever Anymore Going Down In MENA. Historic, Really....Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present. -- Marcus Aurelius
Two third stocks and one third cash 'cuz the end of the run is not yet clear. But it is closer now than it was then. So I'm not WFO. I used to run WFO in 5th gear at Sears Point outa Ten and straight at a concrete wall in Eleven because that was how it was done. I got away with it. Not everybody did. Kinda feels that way now.
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110402-1513542011-04-02T00:00:00Z2011-04-02T00:00:00Z"Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up To Me" That's How You Get Talking Heads Pontificating About A Healed Economy And Business Looking Up. Pay No Attention To What Is Behind The Screen......"The effect of mobiles, computers, satellites—there is a generation coming that is outside the traditional controls. Normally, generations re-create themselves. But something else is happening." -- Mohamed Haykal
There are things I can't do, like serious fundamental analysis of thousands of companies books and in depth analysis of governmental politics and sociopolitical movements on resource allocation and technological and sociopolitical forces versus the political imperatives in the MENA area. I don't have access to the raw data and I'm too busy laying out and bending high purity gas lines. But I can get price vs time on a near instantaneous basis and there is little data available that is more cogent, accurate or determinant. And technical levels left behind mean it's modified risk on with an eye toward how the tenor of the market has changed.
Never mind what makes sense. The market never talks to you more directly than it does with price. Glow inna dark sea food onna West Coast, the Korean war Redux, the risk of Iran and Hamas in Lebanon, the forced retirement of way too many people way too young, major midwest cities drying up and blowing away, very high oil prices, Euro debt issues, etc, if prices go up through resistance and hold, I gotta be thinking, Buy. So I started to scale in last week.
Part way in last week, maybe more this Monday. Maybe.
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110326-1531312011-03-26T00:00:00Z2011-03-26T00:00:00ZFlu An/Or A Bad Cold, Glow Inna Dark Bad Shit In Japan, Live Fire/Real Live Dead In MENA, A Major Push At Work When I Got Back, And All Cash Alla Time Inna 401a, Why Post? That Was Then. This Is Now Risk Management and Capital Preservation is often confused with Market Timing, and therefore is frowned upon. -- Barry Ritholtz
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110319-1712472011-03-19T00:00:00Z2011-03-19T00:00:00ZAll Risk. No Reward In Sight Worthy Of The Risk..... A lotta oil inna ira's and my foolin' around account.
]]>http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110315-0110422011-03-15T00:00:00Z2011-03-15T00:00:00ZWay Too Much Oil Innat.....I Think I'm Gonna Throw Up......."The art of investment is the art of selling. Buying is a lesser skill and holding requires no skill at all." -- Harry Schultz
STILL ALL CASH. Feeling very much more comfortable for it.
Stay Tooned....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110305-1611572011-03-05T00:00:00Z2011-03-05T00:00:00ZShort Week. LOTTA Action....!!!!!One day I sat thinking, almost in despair; a hand fell on my shoulder and a voice said reassuringly, "Cheer up, things could get worse." So I cheered up and, sure enough, things got worse. -- James Hagerty
The vertical line is the day I went from 99% Stocks to 99% cash in the 401a. I took a big hit on the day I stepped off the elevator. It fell another coupla floors down and bounced a touch past half way back up, just past where I stepped off. Will it keep on going back up and will my caution cost me a few dollars of lost gain? Or will the bounce give some trapped bulls an opportunity to sell higher/ will new bad news clock the market again?
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110226-0024332011-02-26T00:00:00Z2011-02-26T00:00:00ZLife Is About Cycles, Dialectical Materialism And Spiritual Concatenation, Yin And Yang, Secular And Cyclical, Two Stroke And Four Stroke...."When the Fed is the bartender everybody drinks until they fall down." — Paul McCulley
Speakin' of young, I saw Cotton a coupla times at the 'mo a coupla years after the Howlin' Wolf video. He showed up with a little club set up and mowed the house down. His version of Bobby "Blue" Bland's "Turn On Your Love Light" was a stand out...
I Can Bank Half Of A Good Year's Return Monday Or Shortly There After. Or Give It All Back. Or Ride It Farther Downa Road. Thinking...... And Watching With My Finger Onna Eject Button.
This Is EXTREME And Now I'm REALLY squirrelly about staying long. I've got a lot of gains to keep, and the potential for substantial losses in a short time.
During lunch I went from 95% Stocks to 99% Cash (Stable Value Fund) with minimal effect from the rapid trading rules. Let's let things settle down. I can get back in in one day, but as the old song goes, "Don't Make Your Move Too soon..."
Stay Tooned....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110219-1621522011-02-19T00:00:00Z2011-02-19T00:00:00ZTalked To A Business Agent At The Last Meeting. There Are Four Of My Apprentice Class Still Active. Two Are In The Business Office And Two Are Still Working In The Field. Makes Me Wanna Ride Fast And Take Chances.It is not worthwhile to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible. --Mark Twain
James Cotton had some smokin' performances at the Monterey Jazz Festival's Sat Afternoon Blues Show that are out there waiting to be discovered. They were broadcast live on KJAZ. My tapes were DBX encoded, dubbed to cassette, and long gone. The KJAZ announcer had it right. "These guys could start a riot inna graveyard."
Uptrend still intact... I'm still innit to the hilt, still with the finger onna eject button.
Excellent first six weeks. Gotta think about possibility and advisability of bookin' profits at some point. This is about a third of what I like to see for the year....
Just because it may make sense doesn't mean I'm gonna do it...
MONDAY.
ANOTHER up day
Uptrend STILL intact... I'm STILL innit to the hilt, STILL with the finger onna eject button. I'm STILL big time concerned. But I'm getting pretty jaded and can't see that it is doing me much good...
Still.....
Tuesday...
Still Long. Looks Like A Pause. A little pullback from a long way up there. It's not time yet......
Wednesday
Even more up, blah blah blah,,,,,
Stay Tooned....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110212-1225042011-02-12T00:00:00Z2011-02-12T00:00:00ZNothing Sharpens Your Appreciation Of Life And Clarifies The Difference Between Fear And Respect Like Looking Over The Edge. But That's A Third Beer Story...."Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength." Corrie Ten Boom
The Markets are always about the balance between Greed and Fear. Lately it is all about greed and the fear of losing out, not losses.
Wall Street always comes back to it's roots... which is Main Street. And Main Street ain't pretty lately. Especially compared to Wall Street. My asset allocation is all about taking what Wall Street offers with an I on the door. Will I get out in time?
I upped my contributions inna 401a when we got some decent choices 6 years ago and that and good and aggressive asset allocation has got the balance and the daily volatility up to where the good days are party hearty and the bad days are like stepping onna rake in tall grass. If I'da had decent choices for the full 20 years of the 401a, now'd be all about nicking some bases on hits on good pitches and I'd have a lot of comfort about retiring is a coupla three or four weeks instead of three or four years after I've run it all the way out...
Oh Well. That's a different life. Somebody else's. So now I gotta get what I can outta what I got inna 401a. Come to think of it, I'm real comfortable with that. YMMV.
So Merrill Lynch’s coverage of Irish banking, before the crisis, was dead on. And they threw their analyst under the bus to whore for more banking fees. Cowards. Criminal toadies. Chickenshit pimps who would sell their mothers into forced prostitution for a buck. That is Merrill Lynch, and the fact that a single goddamned dollar of my tax money went to these spineless, money-grubbing parasites makes my stomach turn. If Goldman Sachs is a vampire squid, then Merrill Lynch is Escherichia coli of banking. Whatever they touch gets sick, and occasionally dies.
Still long, still concerned, still ready to bail. The broad market is up around 25% since Sept, never mind since March 09. I'm balancing the rapid trading restrictions, the trend, the need to book profits and avoid losses, and squirreliness of losing what has not come easy and won't be easily replaced. A correction of 4% to 10% would not be unexpected. A correction of 10% to 20% would not be beyond the pale. The thought of grinding hard to get back to even from an unexpected flash crash or downside panic is not welcome. Multi year bull markets are a lot more fun. Autopilot up day after day is low stress. Bear market rallys can be viciously explosive to the upside and can be exhilerating, but they can go down farther and faster than they went up too.
Still, I have all the the tools and info I need short of prescience, so WTF.
Monday Eve...
DAMN! One Gawddamn up day after another without surcease. How long can Wall Street dance to the stars in the face of Main Street doin' the Main Street Moan?
I'm Keepin' On Chooglin' with tight stops on the IRA's and Tradin' Account and ready to pull the rip chord on the 401a.
The longer it goes higher, the greater the rubber band is stretched, the more violent the snap back will be. The crazier the upside, the sweeter the gains, the greater the pains of giving a substantial chunk of it back.
I don't have a whole lotta fear. But I do have respect for consequences. That translates into a higher state of alertness and a determination to avoid giving ANY more back than what is absolutely unavoidable...
Wed Eve...
More O The Same... Tick, Tick, Tick.....
See Ya At The Hall
Thurs
Even More More Of The Same....
But Is It Rolling Over...?
Stay Tooned...
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110205-1429432011-02-05T00:00:00Z2011-02-05T00:00:00ZNever A Dull Moment.... Events In The World Take Their Own Course... Egyptian Tanks In Cairo Can't Clear This Year's Tiananmen Square, So They Send Jets and Copters?"Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security," -- John Allen Paulos
Things are in a state of flux. We had recovered well from last week's downdraft. Then the uncertainty of a political crisis in Egypt. The market hates uncertainty and I came home Friday to find that most but not all of the weeks recovery taken back.
Still way long. Dead cat bounce today back from the brink of last Friday. It'd be nice to recapture the narrow channel, But I'd take staying within the wide channel and continuing up quite happily... It looks tenuous... But staying long in the face of all that is prudent and conservative has been the right thing to do for a long long time. So I'll keep on keeping on... But I'm just living with it and I'm not married to it.
One day long will be wrong and I hope I'll catch on quick. maybe tomorrow...maybe not.
I've got a lot of respect for Barry's macro analysis and his tutoring over the years.
Pretty Much Business As Usual.... You Can't Go Wrong If You Stay Long.
Well, You CAN Go Wrong By Being Long, And Big Time Wrong Too. But The Market Will Do It To Us Big Time When It Is Damn Good And Ready. Until Then...Party On!!!!!
More Of The Same....
It Looks Like All Is Well...
We've Regained The Narrow Ascending Channel,
I'm Still Nervous And I'm Still Not A Believer.... But I Am Still A Player. Steady As It Goes, All Eyes Look Sharp....
Still Way Long In The Most Aggressive Fundz Inna 401a.
Still Long An' It's Still Workin' For Me... Still Squirelly About It. Gritted Teeth And Itchy Trigger Finger.
Stay Tooned....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110130-1751532011-01-30T00:00:00Z2011-01-30T00:00:00ZIt Don't Look That Bad, Really .... It Sure Feels Bad, Though..... Could Feel Worse Tomorrow.You can't trust anything the government says. Wait, I knew that already. Thanks for nothing, Julian Assange. -- Paul Vigna
Yeah That Is Who You Think It Is. And Chris Spedding Too... I was unaware of the relationships between Dick Dale and Hendrix and Dick Dale, Leo Fender, and JBL.
Bloody Costly Days Continued...
So I'm All In Inna Two Most Aggressive Fundz Inna 401A.
And the post parabolic move/beginning of the earnings reports dollar losses in the account are a kick inna gonads. It brings home to me why so many of the guys I work and hang with are so comfortable with all their money in the GIC/Stable Value Fund. We've got 20-30 years inna trades and some coin inna 401a. We got the possibility of some serious upside moves in a few days or weeks time in the 401a account. But we also got the possibility of some breath taking moves down in a bad week. In the end, we gotta go with what lets us sleep at night. For some, that is the cash equivalent fund in the 401a and a regular coupla percent a year up in the account and no wild and crazy up days and stoopid bleeding from the eyeballs down days. Nothing wrong with recognizing that what you have in the 401a is a significant amount to you and worth being concerned about. Once you see daily or weekly balances bouncing around and gaining and losing you significantly more than you earn at work that week, you are obligated to make a choice about how to deal with it. Eliminating the possibility of losing what you got, making a very modest return and sleeping soundly is a totally acceptable choice. To deny that would be dumber than a box of rocks. Which I ain't.
But I see things differently than most other people. I still have a race bike and I think about track days and racing again. I'm kinda like into action and motion as a life style and a preferred mode of operation. It takes all kinds.... that's why choices exist. And I ain't alone... There are guys I've shown the what and how to who are playing the game the same as I am, for whatever their own reasons are.
So....
I'm getting enough of a balance in the 401a where what was a few dollars move due to everyday ordinary market volatility is now some serious coin up and down. Gotta readjust my concepts here. If I see the huge upside days as part of the process and can work with them, I gotta be able to deal with the other side of the deal too.
So Check out the chartz.
Looks like a parabolic move up in a short time that paid off big time.
So I'm building my 401a like mad when the weather is good. Sometimes a Summer storm or the first few storms of the Fall soak everything, blow the tarps around and maybe fuck up something badly enough that it takes time and money to fix it. Ain't no big thing. It's the price of getting something done. At least it ain't noo big thing as long as I don't let it become a big thing. I gotta secure everything for the winter when the time comes and react in the case of an unexpected tornado on the horizon...
In the last week, I've lost in my 401a what would have been a totally unacceptable amount of money 15 years ago. Like say the first three years of contributions and investment gains. Or, looked at differently, I've gotten my nose tagged hard enough to remind me that bad things can happen and that the chart above says that bad things might be eminent. The uptrend is just barely intact, is extended and has been unrelenting and parabolic, and has been cruisin' for a bruisin'. The market might be starting to roll over hard after an explosive move up and there are a lot of people with profits to protect and the downtrend could get ferocious. I really haven't been hurt yet. My eyes are watering and there's a spot of blood on my sleeve, but here is not a lot of damage done. But I have been warned.
Staying long in the face of every reasonable appeal to prudence and caution has worked and worked well for the last 90 days. Nothing lasts forever...
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110122-1615312011-01-22T00:00:00Z2011-01-22T00:00:00ZStartin' Third Week O' The Year.... I'm Busier Than A Long Tailed Cat Inna Rockin' Chair Factory Makin' Retirement Money Inna 401a While I Can And Prepping To Make The Moves To Keep It When It Gets Hard To Do So...The only thing on the level on Wall Street is the water in the toilet bowl. Bill Singer
The first is the only instrumental to be banned from Top 40 radio. The second is 20 years later. Interestin' story. I've got a copy of a live radio broadcast from a recording studio in the 70's in the Bay Area. Nice clean recording of about an hours music. Fabulous Rockabilly...
I bailed outa stocks inna 401a two Fridays ago cuz I'm looking for a correction and it sure looked like the start of one. I kept IRA and trading accounts in stocks ona counta cuz o' diversification and greater flexibility in those accounts. False alarm. I was 99% back in stocks inna 401a by last Thursday. I'm now exposed to losses and penalties because of the a rapid trading rules if I bail out again in the next month, but oh well, there is a cost to everything. In this case I have to look at the cost of selling in front of or in the early part of a correction vs the possible cost of holding on deeper into a correction or all the way through one... I figure taking the occasional small hit is the cost of doing business. Taking the big hit going all deer inna headlights is not doing business...
Stocks Go Up On The Escalator. They Go Down By Way Of The Elevator Shaft.
At some point I will sell big time again. I'd rather it happens after rapid trading restrictions no longer apply. If the markets stay up for more than a month, No Problem! But, faced with losses from falling stock prices significantly greater than the losses due to triggering the rapid trading penalties, it'll be a no brainer to bail on a cascade down. No brainers are my specialty. You sell to avoid the wrong risk or to avoid the losses. It's stoopid not to...
Here's the run from 9/1/10 to now in the funds where I had a significant percentage of my 401a coin.
I jacked the risk way (around 100%) up for the reward. I earned a very good year's worth of returns inna quarter. At some point I'll jack the risk way back down because that is the other side of the coin. When it's summer time and the winds and currents are right, you put everything that floats inna water. When it's all darkness, lightening, and waves and the ocean looks like Gods's blender, you go indoors and wait out the winter.
Pretty simple in the large part...
Ahll Be Baaack.....
Ghastly Bloody Costly Day For Me... 1/19/2011
Well... Not Really....
I did end up the day with a substantial loss in the 401a, my family IRA's, and my trading account. DEFINITELY a substantial loss in terms of pulling that much cash out of my pocket and throwing it away.
But Lookie Here...
Here's where the market has come from and gone to since 9/1/10.
I've been aggressively long for most of that run. What made today so nasty was how WFO I was this AM gathering while the gathering has been good. No Surprise I got my nose bloodied. Should I have been more conservative going into today? Hell yes. Did I think about it? Hell Yesss!
But I've thought of it a buncha times before inna last three months and it woulda been big time wrong not to stay WFO. So I was right a bunch, big time wrong once, and still looking good in the perspective the chart above shows...
Time to pull in the horns a tad. I'll prolly lighten up some in all the accounts tomorrow. I'm still well ahead of where I could have been if I hadn't put and kept it out on the table. > If I can keep most of what I've made in the last four months, that's a not half shabby outcome for less than four months work...
Rev Shark is right; Capital preservation is job #1 and not putting yourself in a position where you have to use all your smarts and luck and three quarters of the next run up getting back to even is job #2,#3,#4,#5,#6,and #7.
Stay tooned.....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110115-1611392011-01-15T00:00:00Z2011-01-15T00:00:00ZCoupla Things.... Guests For New Year's Dinner, And The 12/31 Data Has Not Posted For My 401a....Despite Being There @ My Brokers And Charting Service...AND The Dividend And Cap Gains Have Yet To Show Either.....Despite all of the talk about Democratization of investing, Wall Street primarily serves only the very wealthiest Americans. And that is a shame. -- Barry Ritholtz
No Chartz And Table Zup @ www.joefacer.com Kinda....See da header.... except not not... See Below.....
I got the right prices on the 401a site by entering the wrong dates... But I'm not so sure about the shares/cap gains/dividend reinvestment situation. Prolly close enuf fer what I do, so there ARE chartz. But they'll be even righter next week.
I saw the Yardbirds @ the 'mo during the last tour just before they morphed into Led Zep... Two sets from 20' off the stage. Cream from half way back at the 'mo, Hendrix, A.King, And Mayall @ Winterland, 2 sets and I left at 2:30 and Hendrix was still goin strong... Butterfield w/ Bloomfield and Bishop @ the 'mo and later @ the Carousel ('mo West). J. Tull @ the Berkeley Community Theater after the Benefit album and again on the Thick As A Brick tour.... the Who just after Woodstock was released....GAWD... if I could only replay these note for note/minute for minute... as well as another coupla three four hundred hours... Oh Well....
I've got this old HP that is my workhorse that predates Vista; I got the Vista upgrade disk that was supposed to come with it a coupla three four months later inna mail. The VERY FIRST ITERATION of Vista. I've never upgraded. Sunday I did so, starting at 2:00 PM. "how hard could it be? What could possibly go wrong?"
I've been a computer user since '82. I'm an old DOS 2.01 Dinosaur and I got my eccentricities... The HP has a lotta stuff... all over it. Rather than lose stuff stuck in an arcane directory associated with a program, I decided to upgrade to Vista and then upgrade to Seven rather than do a clean install. Well....
The Vista upgrade disk didn't recognize my upgraded and patched XP system as anything it expected to see... XP was supposed to be DOA. So I un repatched my OS and beat the computer/disk duo into submission... Then my new version of Vista needed 107 updates to get modern enough to work...and be upgradeable.
At 11:00 Sunday evening I decided to upgrade my seldom used Vista laptop since I sure as hell wasn't gonna need the 7 upgrade disk inna near future. Sure enough, my laptop only needed 50 upgrades prior to Sevening.... Grrrrr.
1:30 Sunday AM, I had a Vista'd PC.
10:00 PM Monday evening I had a Windows 7'd Desktop and Tuesday mid morning I had my W-7 laptop.
To adapt to 7 or adapt it to me... that is the question....
Now a clean W 7 install onna brand new home media server I'm nerding with and I'm home free for a while.....
I've done my asset allocation with an eye toward two things.... Maximizing profits when the market was going up and being able to step to the side effectively when the market gets dangerous... That looks like today. The market has been ready to go down for a while. It looks like the court decision in Mass. concerning Wells Fargo and US Bank and the payroll report were a good catalysts/excuses. I loaded up my 'chute and if I don't cancel my pending exchanges at the end of the day, I step off of the escalator big time.
STAY TOONED...
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry110101-1212092011-01-01T00:00:00Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZDickens; The Man Who Invented Christmas.... You Have No Idea How Much You Owe This Particular Limey........"The uniform, constant and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition, the principle from which public and national, as well as private opulence is originally derived, is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things toward improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of government, and of the greatest errors of administration. Like the unknown principle of animal life, it frequently restores health and vigour to the constitution, in spite, not only of the disease, but of the absurd prescriptions of the doctor." —Adam Smith
My Granddad Said; "If You're Lucky, Shit'll Do For Brains." I'm Down Wid Dat.....I Made A Good Year For The 401a From Three Months In The Right Fundz... Tight Market Stops Float My Boat...
More To Come... Stay Tooned......
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry101223-2222162010-12-24T00:00:00Z2010-12-24T00:00:00ZYa Gotchur Church Key, Your Skate Key, Your Line Level RCA Interconnect, An' Ya Got Me. All These Things Are Way Dated, But Not Quite Obsolete, Yet.... I Hope. In The Meantime, I Gotta Get A New Ribbon Fer My Daisy Wheel Printer An' A Roll O' Film Fer My 35mm An' My Wife's 110, An' A Brand New VHS VCR Cuz I Used Up All My Betamax Tapes ......Sure Hope I Can Find A Woolworths Or Monkey Wards Open Onna Sunday."Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better." -- King Whitney, Jr.
Hangin' On And Lookin' Over My Shoulder. This Is A VERY Good Year In 3 Months..... NOT Gonna Give Any More Back Than I Have To.....It's Up So Much, It's Kinda Scary.....
http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry101218-0252202010-12-18T00:00:00Z2010-12-18T00:00:00ZThe Demo's Snatched Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory And Resusitated The Republicans From Next Door To Death. THAT SUCKS!!! But The Tax Compromise Is A SMOKIN HUGE Fiscal Stimulus In The Face Of The Tea Partiers. Gonna Be An Interestin' 2 Years....I've concluded that all statements made by Goldman Sachs make sense if you append on the phrase "so just give us your money". - George Zachary
Back Inna Day, I Saw The Yardbirds At De 'Mo. Clapton Was Long Gone By The Time They Hit The Charts, And Beck Was Long Gone By The Time I Saw Them At The De 'Mo. But They Had This Guy Named Page Sawin' Onna Guitar Wit A Violin Bow An' He Was Pretty Good In His Own Right...
I'm Outa Bonds And WFO In Stocks...How'd That Happen ????!
Here's Why...
If you were in bonds this year, you looked reeely smart up until the second week of Sept. You were just SMOKIN' Stock's Returns With Corporates and Treasuries. I Wuz There, Did That. It Worked Reeely Good. Then The Game Changed In Sept And I Changed With It. I Made A Good Year In Three Month's Time. This Has Been And Is A High Risk And High Reward Moment... And This Too Will Change. Makin' Gains Is Half Of It. Keepin' It Is The Other Half....
Still Long And Strong...Almost All In In Stocks Less A Little In The GIC...I'm Still A Believer, But Every So Often I Draw A Lttle Outa Stocks And Definitely Do Not Put It In Bonds...
Stay Tooned....
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http://www.joefacer.com/pblog/index.php?entry=entry101211-1443432010-12-11T00:00:00Z2010-12-11T00:00:00ZAll Work And No Play Make Jack A Dull Boy. But All Play And No Work Makes No Jack At All....Gotta Get The Proportions Right. Know What I Mean, Vern? ("KnoWhutImean, Vern?) See below...We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. -- Winston Churchill
It's a SELF DIRECTED plan, see. Not a self neglected plan. I've long since blown off the Balanced Pooled Fund because I understand that it is the default plan, complete with all de faults anyone needs. I self direct and I went into high gear around 9/1. These are my horses from then until now.
And here is where I am as of 6:00 Friday 12/3 along with my and the B/P Funds returns. Pretty kool. Stay tooned for the rest of the month as I attempt to as I try to nail down gains before they go away and at the same time, not leave the game too soon. YMMV.
Burj Khalifa,
Burj Khalifa, From Space....Here, Hold The Tape, An I'll Walk To The Other End Of The Shadow An We'll Save The Trouble Of Climbing To The Top Of This Building To Measure how Tall It Is.....
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