The Dow Jones and S&P 500 closed at new heights, Monday evening.
Several friends told me they thought stocks “were climbing a wall of worry.”
Wall Street is great at making up expressions to justify any situation.
My favorite is “put your money to work” – i.e. buy something we’re selling.
Wall Street makes up expressions when it has no idea. But stocks have done well — with minor blimps for the Dot Com bust in 2000 and the Sub-Prime mortgage bust in 2008.
The lesson in both cases was sell when it drops say 15%-20%. Buy back when it dropped 50% — when the world looked gloomiest. Here’s the chart.
Now we’re at another high.
Where now?
Some friends believe it will continue rising. There’s still plenty of downtrodden stocks below their highs, e.g.
I have friends who plow through this oblivious to gyrations, by simply sticking to their dollar cost averaging. Put a fixed percentage of their monthly pay check into a simple broad index fund. Don’t try guessing individual stocks, or fashionable industry-specific ETFs.
I have some who try the dangerous game of playing hot stocks. Look what’s happened to two of them in the last year.
And look at Netflix, as it just disappointed in signups and dropped by 15% last night.
The lesson here is entry points are critical.
Others are content with day trading, finding there is more psychological pleasure from making dimes on intra-day movements, compared with the pain of overnight surprises.
Others are trying a combination of strategies — buying solid companies paying solid dividends and selling put or call options, depending on the “mood” of the market.
Personally I’m trying a little of every strategy — with an emphasis on learning what works for me, Harry Newton. That’s what’s key. What works for you. More about this another day.
For now, we’ve all done well. Super well. We survived two potential black swans, Brexit and Turkey. And we kept on charging. So far nothing awry — black Swanish — seems on the horizon.
This evening’s Republican Convention.
Donald Trump is not my favorite. But his life is endlessly fascinating — which makes reading about him so totally engrossing. Remember Trump’s best-selling book, “The Art of the Deal.” The ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz, has come out with an admission that he regrets writing the book. And he explains why. Please read the article. Click here.
I did like Melanie’s talk Monday night.
Please don’t use these sheets in your dryer.
Two reasons:
1. You don’t need them. Your dryer works fine without them.
2. If you knew its chemical ingredients, you’d run for the hills. They’re all carcinogenic (well, most of them). Here’s a list. Also read here.
Harry Newton who marvels at what happened in Turkey. In a nutshell, the boss, Erdogan, who came to power in 2002, has been acting increasingly autocratic, increasingly paranoid and increasingly crazy — expressed best in pictures. He just built this presidential palace. It’s 3.2 million square feet, cost at least $1.2 billion, has at least 1150 rooms and isn’t finished. His new private residence will add another $250 million to the bill:
This is it at night.
A welcoming ceremony for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on January 12, 2015 showed Erdogan flanked by members of the presidential guard dressed in historic warrior costumes. Intended to represent the military costumes of 16 Turkic states, comments about their historical inaccuracy resulted in a viral social media joke about the guards at the presidential palace. The dean of Pamukkale University’s Faculty of Medicine, Professor Hasan Herken, who tweeted “Do you know which Turkic state that man wearing a bathrobe represents?”, later resigned his position after receiving death threats and protests by local youth branches of the AK Party (Erdogan’s party).
This is Erdogan welcoming Angela Merkel of Germany.
This is Donald Trump and Mike Pence being interviewed by 60 Minutes last weekend. Note the gold chairs.
Following the weekend’s failed coup, the Turkish Interior Ministry fired nearly 9,000 police officers, arrested 6,000 military personnel and suspended nearly 3,000 judges. Turkey is talking about re-introducing the death penalty.
