In Search of the Perfect Investment

You don’t need me to tell you the few shares you still own are doing horribly.

You don’t need me to tell you of the zillions of “learned” recently-published articles predicting more gloom and doom for stockmarkets and economies. (See below.)

You don’t need me to tell you that our Stop Loss Rule is working and getting us out of tumbling stocks. Hence, saving us money.

You don’t need me to tell that you’re cash-rich and it’s burning a hole in your pocket. (And attracting every scam “artist” under the sun.)

You don’t need me to tell you that the only two positions I have that are working are GPRO (GoPro) and BSV (a Vanguard Short Term bond fund paying a miserable 1.31% yield).

I don’t know when this will bottom.

I don’t know when this will pass. If the world goes into recession, it may take years for markets to recover.

But then it may not.

Right now I don’t see anyone interested in buying stocks.

I do know that what was a “sure thing” just recently — e.g. FANG (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google) is no longer. Ditto for biotechs, banks, railroads, oil and fracking companies and sundry other erstwhile hot areas I can’t remember now.

If you want to live for another day you’ll cherish the growing pile of cash that’s accumulating in your brokerage account. Figure we’ll use some of it to buy some bargains when things get less squirrelly. They will, one day. Just not now.

“Light” reading material (from all over)

+ Guggenheim’s $240 Billion Man Says Nasdaq to Tumble Below 3,800. Click here.

+ One railroad executive perfectly laid out the problem facing the US economy. Click here.

+ Big companies pull back after rough quarter. Click here.

+ Debt, defaults, and devaluations: why this market crash is like nothing we’ve seen before. A pernicious cycle of collapsing commodities, corporate defaults, and currency wars loom over the global economy. Can anything stop it from unravelling? Click here.

+ Forget About “Stocks For The Long Run” Click here.

+ Man who nailed 2015 oil plunge is predicting a dismal 2016. Click here.

It could be worse

Man walks into a crowded bar and loudly calls out, his big handgun waiving toward the full bar, “I’ve got 10 shells in this gun and one loaded in the chamber. Whose been sleeping with my wife”?

A voice in the back calls out, “You’ll need more bullets than that!”

Harry Newton, who played tennis badly this morning. Two and a half percent down on the S&P500 is not a happy way to begin a week, nor good for my miserable backhand.