Quantcast
WHAT'S NEW? Our Latest Updates!

August 2010 Performance Review

In August our Conservative portfolio was down -0.8% while our Aggressive portfolio was down 1.8%. Stocks sank last month and bonds were strong once again.  The S&P 500 index fund was down 4.53% while the total bond market index fund was up 1.61%. Smaller cap stocks were hit hard, down 7.4%. The Nasdaq was in equally hot water, off about 6.2%. This took most stock mutual funds down more than the S&P 500 as the S&P 500 tends to be larger cap oriented than most funds. 

July 2010 Performance Review

Most major indexes were up almost exactly as much as the S&P 500; the Nasdaq delivered a 6.9% uptick and the smaller cap Russell 2000 gained 6.87%. Foreign stocks got a double boost from a falling US dollar and rebound in stocks, some from a sharper drop on the way down  (best illustrated by our new Vanguard European ETF, which climbed 14.18% for the month).

Bye-Bye Bonds?

Big money has been moving into bond funds over the last year or so. We saw a similar situation in the late 1990s, with massive flows into stock funds. Broadly speaking, this trend might lead us to favor stocks over bonds for the next few years, since we generally avoid whatever attracts fund investors. But there's a little more to this money flow than meets the eye.

June 2010 Performance Review

Once again we’re seeing interest rates decline as the reality of a slow economy and low demand for borrowing trumps fears of government-fueled inflation. Junk bonds performed surprisingly well. Normally, if there is such a thing as  “normally” in investing, the boost high yield bonds prices get from lower interest rates during a sliding stock market would be overridden by growing economic fears and expectations for higher defaults in the future on high yield bonds. This is largely why junk bonds did so badly in 2008. 

New Model Portfolios

June marks the 100th month we’ve published the Powerfund Portfolios newsletter, and to mark the occasion, we’re making some executive changes to our model portfolios. We’ll be reducing the number of model portfolios and (eventually) moving to daily performance updates.

June 2010 Trade Alert!

We're making trades in both the Conservative and Aggressive Powerfund Portfolios, effective June 30th, 2010.

May 2010 Performance Review

May was the first truly bad month for stocks and higher-risk bonds since the great comeback that started a little over a year ago. The only fund categories that were up, besides funds that short, were municipal bond funds and federal government bond funds. Funny how whenever there is a global panic of any size investors pile into what is supposedly the root of all evil in the economy, fiscally irresponsible governments.

Greece Fire

We  want to be in the fund categories other investors avoid. During the market comeback's last hurrah, investors began piling back into junk bonds and foreign, small cap, natural resources, and commodities funds. We prefer investing in these areas when prices are down as investors scramble for safety. Today's investors are worried about inflation, which usually ensures inflation won't be a big problem.

May 2010 Trade Alert!

In recent commentary we noted pending trades to move us away from higher risk, cyclical bond and stock categories and towards lower default risk bonds and less cyclical stock fund categories. We want to be in fund categories that other investors are avoiding. During the last hurrah of this market comeback, investors are piling back into foreign markets, junk bonds, small cap, natural resource and commodities, and the like.

April 2010 Performance Review

Europe is falling out of favor with investors fast, as if it’s finally dawning on the world that all this money going overseas to avoid America’s dismal future may have invested in an even worse one. The US dollar wasn’t going to fall forever, and European economies were no better than America’s, with all the things investors supposedly hate about America and then some: high unemployment, expensive government spending programs, debts, etc.