Here are a few good lessons. Perhaps describing his oracle, from Warren Buffett in 1979, "The future is never clear," and "You pay a very high price for a cheery consensus." And from Frank Napolitano, the irascible head of the firm who bank rolled my trading career in 1996.."Dougie, always remember...Cash is King!" If you've been following our weekly analysis, you've [...]
The GSCI Commodity Index ((GSG)) consists primarily of Energy (71%), but also contains Agriculture (14%), Industrial Metals (7%), Livestock (4%), and Precious Metals (4%). After breaking through both moving averages in the beginning of the year, the index broke out to the upside. The index is slightly overbought in the short-term, but given that it formed a golden cross on [...]
In mid-November, the S&P 500 ((IVV)) had just finished breaking its 200-day moving average on its way to a multi-year low at the 1343 level. Since then, the index has been on a tear, gaining over 12% in a little over 2 months. It finds itself at a critical stage though, as the index shows signs of being overbought. The [...]
For clients in our Global Opportunities portfolio, we have seen quite a run in our largest holding, Visa. Visa has doubled in the last 18 months. This out-performance has pushed Visa's exposure in the portfolio to close to 1.5 times it's target weight. Though the stock has been a very good performer, concentration in any one name causes a portfolio to [...]
Unilever PLC ((UL)), a British consumer goods company in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas, jumped to all-time highs after posting better than expected earnings results for the last quarter of 2012. Unilever, producer of brands such as Axe, Dove, Vaseline, Lipton, Hellman's, and Knorr, earlier reported underlying sales growth of 6.9 percent for 2012, beating forecasts of 6.5 percent. [...]
The main take away from this quarter's earnings release is the following: Torrid top line growth. 32.5 yoy% 24.8 5yr CAGR% But, the growth has been expensive, lower margins (25.43% down from 32.22%): Therefore, bottom line growth has slowed. 10.8 yoy% 20.7 5yr CAGR% Google makes the majority of their money as an advertiser. In order to drive this [...]
The Standard & Poor’s 500 is a stock market index based on the common stock prices of the biggest 500 publicly traded American companies. The S&P 500 ((IVV)) successfully bounced off the 50-day moving average at the end of 2012 on it way to making new multi-year highs in January. However, it is quickly approaching overbought territory. Anything above 70 [...]
The Tactical Portfolios range from ETF-based trend-following models to all-stock or all-bond model portfolios that are actively managed. While we tend to use the same asset classes as are found in our Strategic Portfolios, the allocation to each asset class is adjusted using a top-down approach based on our economic outlook, as well as fundamental and technical analysis. The Tactical Portfolios are global in [...]
In the good old days of retirement planning it was customary to assume that retirement income needed to be approximately 75-80% of what you made while you were working. In most cases your house would be paid for and the monthly budget would be substantially reduced. But somewhere along the line the cost of health insurance exploded like a voracious [...]
The S&P 500 Cap-Weighted Index ((IVV)) has had an exceptional bounce-back week, albeit on very low volume due to the holiday weekend. The index blew through its 50-day moving average ov=nce it hit support at the 1400 level, and seems likely push through 1475 after testing support at the 1460 level. The index is up 17.30% in the last year. [...]
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