Late start this morning due to an interview.The jobs number stunk but fortunately the revisions stunk too. Jack Bouroudjian didn't seem too worried though so chances are all is honky dory (that is a sarcastic comment).
Things appear to playing out as they always do which is a positive the way I view the world. Declines in new jobs, fewer hours worked, people leaving the work force and so on are all ordinary recessionary stats.
The one really negative for me, but readers correct me if I am wrong, is based on what I see on the teevee and read in MSM is that there are very few people that take action ahead of time or more correctly have some sort of plan of how and when to take defensive action.
Things being what they are I do get interviewed every so often and I don't know what I could possibly come up with if asked what should investors do now, is it too late; that is a no win question.
If it is a no win question then it must also be a no win strategy.
Is now the time to own commodities? Should people buy gold? Should you sell financials? Should you buy healthcare? On and on.
The focus of this blog has been taking action ahead of time. If you have a diversified portfolio you already have a little gold and a little commodity exposure. These have been great holds for a long time. The question then becomes should I sell a little more or add a little more. That is an infinitely easier question to try to tackle.
If you've been lucky enough to be underweight financials through all of this then adding a little or taking a little off becomes less scary.
And so on.
Things written about here and in other places are proactive decisions and while not everything has been correct of course the decline has been less and all of the things I have written about and implemented for clients I lifted from other people--meaning it was all out there before I came along.
The bigger macro is how do you avoid big chunks of down a lot? You worry about it before it happens. I believe Mr. Kudlow could learn a thing or three about this concept.
Was Hampton Pearson wearing a purple trench coat? That is dapper.
6 comments:
Yesterday Kudlow was saying that it was time for government to step in and fix things. Reminds me of when Bush and Paulson were announcing their little bailout and all the comments here were how much worse it would be if it were being done by Hillary or Obama. Goes to show the ability to shield our eyes from the inconvenient truth. I suggest you refer your legal liability team over to Kudlow. He's in line for the jobs vacated by Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay. charlie
Speaking of a good defense... do you have any thoughts about the Pimco Strategic Global Govt Bond fund (RCS)? Saw it mentioned favorably with a ~7.5% yield and growth seems to be in a mild uptrend (unlike your recent review on AGQNF). Wondering if you have any suggestions on how a non-pro could research the positives & negatives for a small allocation to this one. Thanks.
Roger.
Someone over at Market Watch was asking about an ETF that contained a basket of foreign currencies. The only thing that I could find is DBV. They short and go long currencies in their basket based on interest rates.
http://tinyurl.com/ywwhgl
That somehow looks like a good idea to me in a portfolio. Do you know about DBV, and are there any other such ETF's out there that you know of?
Thanks....
I wrote about DBV here.
As far as RCS; ETFconnect shows it at a 7% premium, but it has had a premium for most of the last 5 years.
it looks like mostly treasuries with a couple of other things so I'm not sure what the point of differentiation is. The positive comment you read could be correct but there is nothing the jumps out about it.
The word is 'cue', not 'queue'. Makes me wonder what else you don't know.
there is plenty i don't know.
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