Bill DeShurko

I am unabashedly biased. I have thought since the beginning that 70% of the entire ECB concept was flawed…and 99.9% of the actual implementation. Here in the U. S. those of us that live in fly-over country bristle enough when Americans and mostly elected  Americans, in America (Washington DC), feel the need to control our lives. Imagine instead if all of Washington’s rules and regulations instead were handed down from a non-elected group of non-Americans, residing in Quebec or Mexico City. That’s the ECB.

For investors in the U. S. this really is a non event…except it probably strikes a little more fear in the hearts of the anti-Trump group, that his rhetoric my be hitting home in a similar fashion as Brexit was supported by the non-elite, non-financial, -non-traditional politicians in England.

Short term the markets may be more volatile. This is a case of volatility literally feeding volatility. Many trading algorithms are partly based on trading on volatility. The more volatile the market the more the algorithms are programmed to sell. Which triggers more selling. It has been heartening to see fairly stable markets today. 3% drop isn’t fun, but it has happened for far less dramatic events in the past.

At 401 Advisor, LLC we are mostly invested, but for new clients or new monies that have transferred in recently, we used this morning as a buying opportunity. I’d actually hoped for a bigger “opportunity”, but we picked up a few shares cheaper than they were yesterday.

I wrote for article on investing during volatile times that appeared Wednesday at Kiplinger’s web site.

The media, fund companies, and 401(k) provider’s can focus too much attention on short term risk. Despite major bear markets from the Great Depression to the Great Recession a portfolio of diversified stocks actually carry less risk than alternatives like bonds and t-bills over long periods of time. How much income are you going to miss out on in retirement by allocating your portfolio based on short term volatility instead of long term performance? For more, the entire article can be found here at http://www.usnews.com

With the recent market volatility, political craziness and usual global worries the gold” bugs” have come out in force. Last week I published the following article on Kiplinger’s  website.

Click <HERE>for the full article

If you’re a client of 401 Advisor, LLC you likely hold Apple, Inc. (AAPL) stock in your portfolio. While the stock has been beaten up this year, the company has many redeeming qualities. For my take, I have posted the following article  for my column at www.usnews.com “The Smarter Investor”

The article has also been picked up by Yahoo Finance, here.

To read more on the new fiduciary standard The entire article can be read at The U S News & World Report, The Smarter Investor Blog and was also published  on Yahoo! News

401 Advisor, LLC has been operating under a Fiduciary standard since the business was formed in 2004. In short, it’s about time the rest of the industry has to disclose fees and conflicts of interests. Hard to understand why companies like UBS, Merrill Lynch, LPL and Raymond Jame to name a few, fought so hard to prevent the ruling.

I just had a new article on the draw backs of 529 Plans published at Crains Wealth website: http://www.crainswealth.com/article/20150603/WEALTH/150609965/money-milestones-downsides-of-a-529-college-savings-plan

While 529 Plans do offer some tax advantages, they do come with restrictions. For some families a portfolio of good old fashioned high quality stocks might offer a better alternative.

The markets are getting interesting, I plan to update the blog soon with new analysis. Until then, here’s a thought…

“To succeed in the markets you need to make your own decisions. Numerous traders cited listening to others as their worst blunder.” – Jack D. Schwager (Investment manager, author, Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with Top Stock Traders, b 1948)

With oil crashing and the worst week for the DOW in two years behind us, I thought I’d weigh in on our market outlook. Especially after reading an article last week titled “This is What a Market Crash Looks Like.” Geeesh, let’s not over react!

Below is a graph of the SPY, the S&P 500 Index ETF since January 2013. Each little bar represents a day – green meaning the market was up for the day and red the market was down. Overall the market has moved up in a rather orderly fashion between the two white lines for two years now. The exception being, a little dip this past October below the bottom white line.

In traders’ parlance the bottom white line is termed “support”. Meaning it represents a price level where buyers tend to come into the market and bid prices back up. Looking at the chart above, we are clearly headed down to support – but we aren’t there yet. So we are still in the “normal” range for stocks to move in. In other words, we are not yet at panic mode.

Below is another perspective. In this chart each block (we actually call a “candle”) represents a week’s change in the market’s price. So a green box means the market was up from Monday through Friday, and a red candle, that the market was down.

I like this view as it takes some of the daily “noise” out of the picture. Going from right to left you have two red boxes – the first just represents the current week – so at the time of this writing Monday the 15^th from open until 11:54 AM. The next red box is last week. But preceding this was seven consecutive positive weeks. That is unusual. A down week or two at this point is not just expected but would be a bit reassuring that we are not entirely in “bubble” mode.

Bottom Line

The markets’ may be a bit unsettling for the next week or two, but hold on until January. In fact go tend to your shopping or put a few extra lights up outside, but ignore the market noise and enjoy a happy and blessed Holiday and New Year. I’ll be here watching the market for you!