ETF

Silver and Gold

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Have you been paying attention to gold and silver prices? Silver has doubled this year! Gold is up about 57% too. So, if you have some silver and gold, you may want to take some profits and buy my Christmas gift! Just kidding. I am glad I started collecting American Silver and Gold Eagles! You can buy them from the US Mint in proof form, or you can get graded coins from a reputable coin dealer. You can also buy gold thru an ETF (I like IAU rather than GLD – its expense ratio is lower) or silver via the SLV ETF. The boom will probably not last forever but is still a good idea to allocate some of your portfolio to precious metals and a little to crypto too. read more

Commentary for the week ending 04/29/2022

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Well, this has been a rough week (and month/quarter), especially for growth investors.  I have been particularly disappointed in PYPL and NFLX.  I think that NFLX will recover – I think worries over subscriber defections are overblown.  There is still room for growth, especially outside of the US.  But we will see.  As for PYPL, I am less than sanguine.  Management has been less than open with their reports.  So I can’t say I would buy more.  As for the rest of the stocks, stay the course and I still think you will be rewarded.  I am especially confident that AMZN will rebound.  Increases in Amazon Prime cost will absorb some of the higher shipping costs and it seems that AWS is unstoppable in the cloud market.  So buy more AMZN with confidence in long term returns.  I know that the fund has failed to beat the S&P so far this year, so again, in the long term I feel that these stocks will win. read more

Review of 2021 and Picks for 2022

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My 2021 picks for the Growth Fund did pretty well, didn’t they?  Fortinet and Nvidia hit the ball out of the park!  But they were balanced out on the downside by BABA, OLLI and VIPS.  The fund would have down so much better without the losers, but hey, I still beat the S&P.  And I did advise taking profits in BABA and VIPS when they were up substantially.  OLLI never did get any traction, did it?  For 2022, I hope to do better (no Chinese stocks for me!), so here are my stocks in order of preference (some are carry overs from last year): read more

November 2021 Observations

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November was a month where the S&P dropped less than 1% but there were frequent swings in both the index and in the underlying market exuberance.

 

It is worth mentioning that December is usually a good month for the market.  It is worth mentioning that initial concerns about a COVID variant may be overblown.  It is worth mentioning that inflation may just be transient. read more

July 2021 Analysis – Storm Clouds are Gathering

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The S&P 500 composite closed up over 2% higher in July than it did in June.  But underneath that statistic are some troubling data.

 

When looking across all sizes of companies (S&P100, S&P 400, S&P500, S&P 600) there are negative trends in New Highs vs New Lows, Advances v Decliners, and % of stocks above their 21 day moving average.  The market typically leads the economy by six months.  Economic data is still favoring Expansion versus Contraction, but now only by a score of 5-3 as opposed to 6-2 or better in recent months. read more

Month End June 2021 Comments

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The S&P 500 tracking ETF SPY rose 1.3% in the month of June.  Analysis of the FRED economic data show that the economy is still in Phase 2 (late growth cycle), which is good for equities.

 

The ETF Portfolio technical investing algorithm calls for a July 1 investment in International Bonds (EDV), Emerging Market Bonds (EMB), and long term Treasury bonds (VCLT).  This is consistent with increase in the flow of monies into bond funds, which indicates that people are hedging these equity ETF bets.  There is too much money chasing too little sources of return, so even low paying bonds are getting play here.   read more