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WHAT'S NEW? Our Latest Updates!

August 2018 Performance Review

At this stage it looks like the U.S. is winning the trade war, but some of this global stock divergence could be due to frightened international investors moving funds into the U.S. from suddenly scary looking emerging market stocks and bonds. 

July 2018 Performance Review

We're still underperforming for the year, with too much interest rate exposure and too little stock exposure, but for the month we were basically in line with the benchmark Vanguard total portfolio fund while still taking less risk in both our portfolios.

June 2018 Performance Review & Trade Announcement

At the end of June we made some trades in the Conservative portfolio largely because one of our holdings, ETRACS 1xMonthly Short Alerian MLP (MLPS), was liquidated for lack of investor interest.

May 2018 Performance Review

The market was rolling along just fine in May with the volatility from earlier in the year seemingly easing and good economic data slowly pushing up stocks and interest rates (and inflation). Then, at the end of the month, Italy returned as a potentially destabilizing force to foreign investing, sending Italian stocks (which we own directly through iShares MSCI Italy Capped (EWI)) down sharply and taking the euro and most other foreign markets down with it.

April 2018 Performance Review

Our slant towards longer-term bonds didn't help in April compared to benchmarks.

March 2018 Performance Review

The relatively tame overall decline of 2.56% in the S&P 500 in March belies the extreme swings that have occurred in the market lately. In the last two months we've seen a fairly quick 10% drop followed by a very quick recovery and then another collapse just recently. Hot tech stocks actually moved to new highs in the bounce back.

Februrary 2018 Performance Review

The problem with a fast climbing market is that sometimes it falls just as fast. This was the case in 1929, 1987, and 2000. Valuations like P/E ratios are relevant to long-term returns but don't mean much when facing extreme short-term volatility. Investors want to make money during sharp rises but don't want to get caught without a chair when the music stops; they tend to leave quickly and in droves at the first hint of a downturn.

January 2018 Performance Review

Too much of a good thing is the main worry right now. We cut taxes into an already heating up economy which will lead to more inflation which will cause the federal reserve to raise rates higher than they would with no tax cuts. This means higher mortgage and other financing rates — and if those go high enough we could be looking at another recession.

December 2017 Performance Review

In 2017 the Powerfund Portfolios gained 13% and 12.1% in our Conservative and Aggressive portfolios respectively. It must have been a hot year in the markets because these were underwhelming returns, not considering downside.

November 2017 Performance Review

It doesn't seem like what you would want to do in the face of dead-end bonds and fast rising equities globally (not to mention the increasing likelihood of corporate tax cuts), but we may have to take the portfolio's risk levels down a bit soon. Hopefully a risk reduction will be contrarian and not stupid…but the two often walk hand-in-hand.