All this upside is starting to attract attention. Investors are warming to stock funds again. This tends to happen shortly before market dips, and if bonds continue to slide as stocks rise we would expect to cut back on equities and shift a little more to debt, but currently stocks are still more appealing valuation-wise than bonds are. ...read the rest of this article»

Investing in markets that seem poised to plummet can be more rewarding than investing when things seem safe. Sadly many investors bailed out of stock funds in recent years. Good news on the bad news front: most every serious financial problem facing America was just kicked down the road. ...read the rest of this article»

Slowly but surely the Powerfund Portfolios are inching up on the S&P 500’s double-digit 2012 return. Competing against the S&P is a challenge because the portfolios are almost always at a lower risk profile because of our allocation to bonds. Even when we are closer heavily allocated to stocks and light on bonds (usually after big slides in the market) we are more diversified than the S&P 500. ...read the rest of this article»

The good times for stocks came to an end in October, though not too abruptly. The S&P 500 was down 1.86% for the month, but is still up an impressive 14.16% for the year. The recent storm hitting the financial epicenter of America and the world had no negative impact on stocks other than a historic closing of the exchange. Surprisingly, foreign stocks did well while emerging market stocks declined. Bonds were essentially flat for the month, as were both Powerfund Portfolios.  ...read the rest of this article»

2012 is turning out to be a good year for stocks and bonds. With September’s 2.58% increase in the S&P 500 equities are up just over 16% since Jan 1. The YTD total bond market fund is up 4% through the end of September. This in the face of on-again-off-again Euro death spiral news and a domestic economy that, while not stalling, is sputtering or at least misfiring outside of technology.  ...read the rest of this article»

In the absence of scary economic news, stocks drift higher – like the roughly 2.25% gain in August. We would expect this to continue if we avoid a deep recession and any debt market shocks that drive rates higher.  ...read the rest of this article»

The rebound in stocks at the end of June carried through to July, though with some slides along the way. It’s a market scared of another collapse, yet it keeps finding support from (probably) not much else than the trillions of dollars globally that needs to be invested and the fact that cash and bonds should be very low return assets for the next few years. ...read the rest of this article»

The S&P 500 Index got off to a rocky start in June but ended up with a just over 4% gain for the month, pushing the index to a near 10% return so far in 2012. Bonds were basically flat even as investors stuffed tens of billions of new money into bond funds while taking money out of stocks. The Vanguard S&P 500 now yields significantly more than the bond index fund: 2.2% vs. 1.88%, both including fund fees.  ...read the rest of this article»

Apparently somebody jumped the gun on the whole stock market ‘sell in May and go away’ cliché. U.S. stocks have been going down since early April, but the selling picked up last month - resulting in a 6% S&P 500 slide and turning the 1-year return for the benchmark negative.  ...read the rest of this article»

Fund investors continue pulling money out of stock funds. We see around $10+ billion a month come out of ordinary mutual funds – an investment class that is in long term decline. If it wasn’t’ for 401k assets, there would be big problems in the mutual fund industrial complex. ETFs continue to bring in money to offset these losses in total fund assets. ...read the rest of this article»