Showing posts with label Junk bonds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Junk bonds. Show all posts

Sunday, June 19, 2022

Are Markets Getting Too Far Ahead? - Weekly Blog # 738

                                    


Mike Lipper’s Monday Morning Musings


Are Markets Getting Too Far Ahead?


 Editors: Frank Harrison 1997-2018, Hylton Phillips-Page 2018 –




Caution

The function of trading markets is to discount future results. As with any predictive exercise, one should recognize judgement mistakes will happen. One major predictive mistake is to get too far ahead of future results, often caused by not recognizing the ebb and flow of future events prior to conclusion.

Connecting many current predictions, we are absolutely going to go thru the following stages, all in predictable time periods.


Bear Market  >  Recession  >  Political Change  >  Bottoms  > 

Recovery  >  Buying Opportunities  >  Bull Markets

Note: there was no mention of mistakes and inconsistences.

Incomplete evidence is popping up suggesting the stock market will return to form and force us to be humble. My best guess is that before we get a formal call that we have entered a recession, we may go through a somewhat violent trading surge first. It will cause some to question the inevitability of a meaningful recession, although the result will not preclude a major decline from causing a restructuring.


Current Evidence 

  1. For the last 2 days of the week, major US stock indices explored lower prices but closed above their lows.
  2. While the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) had only one rising session, the Dow Jones Transportation Index had two. (I believe the transportation index is a better judge of current conditions than the DJIA, which has more of a future orientation)
  3. Last week, there was only one stock price index which rose out of all the S&P 500 indices. (This is unlikely to be repeated regularly.)
  4. The number of shares traded on the NYSE had more volume for the week than the NASDAQ, with 17 million shares declining and 14 million rising. The volume of trading on the NASDAQ was essentially even, with 14.58 million advancing and declining. (As expressed in the past, the NASDAQ has more active traders than the NYSE and consequently is more useful for predictions.)
  5. The JOC-ECRI industrial price index declined -3.4% this week.
  6. Market analysts often believe the results of the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) survey should be viewed as a contrarian indicator. This week, the AAII bearish indicator was an extreme 58.3%, up from 46.9% the prior week.

I believe the odds favor more upside than downside well into July.  The Atlanta Fed’s current GDP reading may soon indicate a flat or contraction estimate, with a possible confirmation by the Federal Reserve on July 28th.  (The 35th anniversary of “Black Monday”)


Fixed Income Signals

Stock investors have learned to pay attention to price movements in the fixed income markets, which tend to be more sensitive to price risks than stock jockeys are.

While the yield curve has been rising sharply for short to five-year maturities, it is essentially flat for five to thirty year maturities.

The collective bet is that inflation will not rise beyond five years. (What does this say about the Presidential election of 2028?)

One sign a bottom has been reached is when an important group of investors capitulates to the current trend, selling out of their positions quickly.

Some believe investors in credit instruments have capitulated and sold off their credit instruments, a move not echoed in the high-quality bond market. This week, the largest net redemptions in the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) market were high current yield funds (pejoratively called “junk bonds”). The redeemers were reacting to a perceived increase in credit risk.

The concern bridging the fixed income market and the stock market is the belief in book value on corporate balance sheets. Book value is based on historic cost less depreciation of fixed assets, which can only be written down, not up. One popular “value investing” approach is to buy shares of a company whose price is below book value. However, if current stock prices do not adequately price book value due to changing conditions, the current book value discount may not be accurate.

Thus, some of the fears expressed in the fixed income world can travel into the equity world, making some stocks risky.


Political Warning

General George Washington warned us about political parties, which is as true today as it was at the founding of the USA.  He said the following:

“However political parties may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

(This quote was part of The American Rhapsody performance delivered at the final concert of the season of the New Jersey Symphony. The US has been blessed by the wisdom of its founders.)    



Please Share Your Thoughts



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https://mikelipper.blogspot.com/2022/06/mike-lippers-monday-morning-musings-how.html


https://mikelipper.blogspot.com/2022/05/bear-markets-recessions-not-inevitable.html



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Sunday, June 6, 2021

History: Good Lessons & Not Great Predictors - Weekly Blog # 684

 



Mike Lipper’s Monday Morning Musings


History: Good Lessons & Not Great Predictors


Editors: Frank Harrison 1997-2018, Hylton Phillips-Page 2018 –




Human Minds

We are all wagering machines. When we wake up day or night we make a bet, most of the time extrapolating the current trend. We remain on this journey and deviate based on internally accepted historic lessons, modified by predictions of change. Pundits, or so-called teachers, are often the sources of these perceived historic lessons. In the few minutes they have our distracted attention they simplify what initiated the change. These summaries are rarely subjected to evidentiary rules and opposing views, or the mood of the times.  

An example of how the viewing of financial data has evolved from my college days is evident in this weekend’s Bloomberg interview with Josh Friedman, Co-CEO of Canyon Partners, a very successful institutional manager of credit portfolios. He is a fellow trustee of Caltech and former Chair of its Investment Committee. His cogent analysis of the investment market suggests that much of what is happening relates to the sale of assets, not earnings, with institutional prices the result of carried interest/performance fees. The skill sets at Josh’s firm include asset accounting.

In the late 1950s, as an undergraduate taking graduate courses, I had the great honor of taking Securities Analysis under Professor David Dodd. He was the principal writer of the textbook with Benjamin Graham (Graham & Dodd). Showing more guts than brains, I questioned his focus on the proper valuation of assets and liabilities, considering his data started shortly after the trough of the Depression, when the first edition of the textbook was published. I felt it was outmoded in a world that was paying for earnings, particularly earnings growth. Smiling, he divulged how much money an investment in his fund had made by investing in assets selling at a discount. 

Columbia offered two courses in the second year of accounting. Cost accounting, popular with aspiring accountants, and asset accounting, tied to the Graham & Dodd investment practice. Asset accounting, unlike cost accounting, did not focus on the historic cost of assets and liabilities and created a much different valuation, similar to what Canyon Partners practices today. Perhaps the most valuable lesson from that course was the final exam, where 50% of the score was devoted to the critical aspects of a business not captured by the accounting statements.

Both the late David Dodd and I were right. In the 1960s and some of the 1970s, stocks with earnings and earnings growth were the standout investments. Later during that period, Mike Milken spotted Keystone custodian funds having a junk bond fund with significantly superior performance to its stablemate, a high-quality corporate bond fund. Milken, through Drexel Burnham (*), began a very successful sales campaign to sell high-yield or junk bonds to insurance companies and savings institutions. It was so successful that there was soon a shortage of paper to fill high-yield demand during this period of low interest rates. Much later, rising interest rates cratered the market price for “junk” bonds, brought on by increased regulatory pressure and Volcker attacking inflationary pressures. At much lower prices, another era of asset accounting value surfaced.

(*) I was a junior analyst at Burnham in the mid-1960s, still chasing earnings.


Cycle Repeats, Lessons Should Have Been Learned

During the early part of the first Obama term, they created stimulus programs to give cash to consumers, hoping their increased spending would influence the mid-term election. However, a good bit of the money was saved or used to pay off debts, reducing the economic lift. With some of the same people in the White House today as in 2009, they should have learned that excess stimulus will create inflation in the years to come, as recovery from the lockdowns creates expansion.


Lesson of Lessons

Each lesson should be adjusted for historical perspective and given a different weight under different conditions. You should also consider when a particular strategy or tactic won’t work. It is also useful to evaluate what else is happening at the time and consider its influence on the result or the value of the result. Although pundits try to deliver a forceful simple statement that immediately solves problems, life is rarely binary. We need to accept that we are complex people living in a complex world.


Predictability

One reason all investors should pay attention to mutual funds is they reveal what individuals and institutions are doing or not doing. Before delving into fund performance statistics, a few general comments might be useful:

  • The main use of mutual funds is to meet retirement or legacy needs.
  • Funds, even no-loads, are sold with involvement of an intermediary.
  • As long-term investments they are rarely disrupted.
  • Most redemptions are completions or reflect changes of needs.
  • The former commission broker is now a wealth manager getting an annual advisory fee, making an ETF the likely choice.
  • Fund owners have other financial assets.
  • Salary savings - 401k, 457, and 403 are pension replacements.
  • Funds are being used by a growing number of institutions.

At least weekly, if not daily, I examine fund performance. From an investment policy standpoint, I pay particular attention to two mega collections of funds encompassing most of the equity assets of mutual funds. There are 18 peer groups of US Diversified Equity Funds (USDEF) and 13 Sector Equity Funds. (At times I pay attention to global, international, commodity, and mixed asset funds as well.) After the end of each month, I look at a report that portrays total return performance for 8 periods, from one week to ten years. One screen I use for some accounts is to see which investment objective peer groups perform better than the average of all S&P 500 Index Funds. The analysis to the end of May shows two important elements.

  1. For the year-to-date period, 10 of 18 USDEF and 8 of 18 Sector Groups beat the S&P 500 Index Funds’ average. This is unusual because index funds have lower fees, less turnover, and less cash. This is a trend that has been happening since the bottom of the market and may not last a long-time.
  2. Contrasting the YTD figures with 10-year performance, one can see the difficulty in beating “the market”. Only 3 of the 18 US Diversified Fund Groups and 4 of 13 Sector Fund Groups beat the S&P 500 Index Funds’ averages.

What was the frequency of various peer group averages beating the market during the 8 periods? Small-Cap Value, Multi-Cap Growth, and Tech Funds each did it 5 times. Large-Cap Growth and Natural Resources did it 4 times.

This suggests that superior investment selection is difficult and possibly should not be an appropriate goal. A subject for a later blog. For those that are interested, I recommend two articles in the Saturday Financial Times on selection difficulties. They are titled “Racing Industry Looks to Epson Derby for Galileo Heir” and “Tiger Cubs on Prowl after Robertson built dynasty in hedge fund jungle”.


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Sunday, August 14, 2016

Can Stocks Move Higher if Bonds Don't?



Introduction

Unlike "data dependent" economists or media pundits, the jobs of portfolio managers and securities analysts is to attempt to make money for their clients. The past is useful in categorizing what has happened in various periods but our job is to make decisions today about what may happen in the future. The question before me today is: when the bond market is no longer rising can stocks go up in price?

Bonds Drive Stocks Since 2000

John Authers, the very perceptive columnist in the FT Weekend edition compares the performance of bonds to stocks since the prior peak in 2000.  His conclusion is that while stocks performed impressively, bonds did extraordinarily. He further points out that on the basis of inflation-adjusted returns, stocks under-performed bonds by 50%. From a shareholder's vantage point the only positive thing that various measures of quantitative easing (QE) has done is it raised the stock price level as measured by the popular indices. As a matter of fact the surge in the Federal Reserve's balance sheet caused by their bond buying is about equal to the growth in the value of the gains of the stock indices since March 2009. This would suggest that the gains in the stock market were in effect paid for by ballooning the Fed's balance sheet rather than enthusiasm for growing earnings or dividends. No wonder these market gains are called the most unloved bull market.

Bond Market Concerns

There is increasing acknowledgment that the global experiment with QE has not propelled various economies to expand. At the moment the Fed is not increasing its bond buying levels and is telegraphing future interest rate hikes. Already US rates are rising. In the last two weeks Barrons' Best Bond Yield average is up 5 basis points which is the same amount that the average of the nations' banks have raised the rate they pay on Money Market Deposit Accounts, (MMDA). Looking to 2017 one assumes that the Treasury will be issuing bonds to pay for the large or the largest infrastructure program ever by the federal government as discussed by the two main candidates.

Based on history, health, expected restructuring of one or both main parties right now it would be wise as to view the next administration as a one term occupant of the White House which could tie in with a likely recession during the term. Alternatively, according to at least one good technical market analyst a potential peak stock market will occur somewhere over the next six years.

Through the Mutual Funds Lenses

The S&P 500 with dividends reinvested is up +8.40% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up +8.64% for the year to date through August 11th . While the average sector fund is up +13.79%, the average US Diversified Equity fund is up only  6.33%. One can see short-term the attraction of bond funds over stock funds when "A" rated bonds are ahead by +8.56%, "BBB" funds +9.60% and High Yield (so-called Junk). +10.71%. However, if one is concerned about intermediate or longer term periods one sees a very different story. In the intermediate five year period on average only the "BBB" funds have a compound growth including their dividends over 5%. They earned 5.34% or essentially their interest payments compounded. On the other hand the average US Diversified Equity fund was up +8.42%. This suggests that over most intermediate and longer time periods stocks have outperformed bonds.

All too often market commentators take the raw net flows into mutual funds as a sign of what investors are thinking and currently supporting; e.g., putting money into fixed income funds and products. These views may prove to be incomplete and naive. At one point in time the bulk of mutual funds sales were made to individuals for long-term investment needs. Somewhere around 2/3rds went into Stock funds and the rest into Balanced and Fixed Income funds. For the most part funds were sold through salespeople or directly through the funds. Within each sale there was a built in redemption usually when the investment need was met or for some unexpected emergency. Today, I believe this type of completion is the main reason for redemptions, not dissatisfaction. What is different today is that selling forces find it more profitable and less burdensome to sell other products to retail individual investors. Thus it appears that money is moving because of dissatisfaction. This will be less of a factor going forward as most of the new money going into mutual funds is for retirement plans and a growing number of tax exempt institutions. This could lengthen the average holding period in funds.

The other misconception about fund flows is the inclusion of the transactions of Exchange Traded Funds [ETFs] and similar products as they presumably have the same kind of holders as mutual funds. For instance in the latest week some $0.6 Billion net came into the combined Equity fund base. What is more significant is that $3.6 Billion came in from two large Index funds. My guess is that most of this money is from hedge funds and other traders who are using Index funds to hedge their individual securities shorts and will sell their ETF positions once they cover their shorts. In the same week on the fixed income side $3.5 Billion went into Fixed Income ETFs, $1.3 Billion in High Yield ETFs and $1.0 Billion flowed into High Grade ETFs. (All of fund flow data is from my old firm, Lipper Inc., now part of ThomsonReuters.)

The First Question: When Interest Rates Go Up Will There be Buyers?

For some time investors in bonds and credits have been able to make money through price appreciation caused by new buyers in addition to the income generated. A period of rising rates will cause fixed income products to get lower prices. I believe there will be a meaningful reduction of flows into these products.

Second Question: Where Will the flows Go?

Long-term investors particularly retirement programs and endowments have a long-term need to generate sufficient income to meet their obligations. If they can not generate the needed funds they will seek investment vehicles elsewhere. Various forms of equity may become more attractive.

Third Question: Why Will Stock Prices Rise Significantly?

Perhaps the best answer is that very few of the market professionals believe that it will. Many of these "experts" have been wrong on Brexit and the rise of various extreme political candidates. Interesting there is relatively low risk because of the previously mentioned unloved bull market. One of the few brave commentators is James Paulson of Wells Capital Management whose latest letter is entitled "Stock investors should look a yonder" where he makes the case for a global economic bounce. He sees a bigger chance for dramatic earnings improvement outside of the US. We have been buying International Equity funds that have portfolios that have lower valued securities growing faster than many domestic funds.


Fourth Question: What is Needed for the Market Bears to be Correct?

As there have always been down markets, we have learned to expect them. Even though we have not had a major decline for sometime, we need to be watchful for such a calamity. For example in a 31 month period from March of 2000 to October of 2002, the NASDAQ Index fell some 78%. While it is interesting that today it is selling above its March 2000 level, it is instructive to note that on a year to date through July 20th, 71% of its gain was achieved by ten stocks. And yes it took 25 years to recover from the 1929 peak. These kinds of declines have been proceeded by extended period of excess enthusiasm which we have not yet seen in at least seven or perhaps even sixteen years. Using price histories that go back hundreds of years some are looking for the next big one to drop over 50%. While this action could happen anytime, at least one technical market analyst believes it is most likely between 2018 and 2022. This somewhat ties in with the next presidential campaign which may be even more concerning than the present dance.
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Sunday, January 5, 2014

Introspection Can Improve Your Investing


Introduction

The holiday season and the turn of the calendar year can create an opportunity for introspection as to how you invest. While one should be just as introspective about wins, it is too difficult for most to separate brilliance and a bull market. Hopefully on the downside it is a bit easier to identify systemic elements that led to losses. To see what impulses are really working, we must shed the standard alibis – “someone lied,” an external negatively interpreted event surprised us, or the weather plus Christmas or Easter came early. While each of these excuses may have happened, your own particular losses are what you were thinking about before, during and after the market prayed upon our conscience.

The following items are what I have developed for review of my investments. I offer these points as a guide as to what one can produce through introspection.

Timing

First it is helpful to admit that very rarely can we buy at the bottom or sell at the top. For the long-term investor to be within 15% of the extreme prices would be remarkable and to accomplish both feats is just about impossible. My timing decisions for the most part are driven by internal and external needs. The internal needs are functions of incoming or outgoing cash flow requirements, a change in the portfolio structure caused by the desirability of exiting some investment and/or inflexible allocation strictures. The external forces have to do with prices or price-related ratios (price to intrinsic absolute value, price to book value, earnings or dividend yield). The external numbers can be viewed on an absolute or relative basis. A sound investment advisor can help with these decisions. In the absence of an advisor, investors are able to conduct the work themselves, accepting that one can be somewhat inefficient and can dollar cost average his or her overtime.

The result of any averaging approach is not to get the single best price. The average price is very likely to be below the best price achieved over the period. The benefit of this unaided strategy is that one has broken the paralysis of analysis. The disadvantage may be for the intervening broker (if you are not using funds), who prefers one large order rather than a series of smaller orders.

The value of the last conversation

In both the military and in various theatrical shows the last conversation usually places everything into perspective and then there can be an immediate action to solve the issue at hand. The last action may well be, but not necessarily, the most current information on a moving target. Like with all elements of information the last one needs to be evaluated in terms of quality of information: (how much is factual rather than opinion?), accuracy (do the “facts” tie in with previous information?), and motivation of the source (what does the provider in the long run expect in return?). In a world bound by concerns of inside trading and full disclosure regulations, the game has become more difficult but more rewarding. The SEC has accepted the “Mosaic Theory” approach to building investment conclusions, which is actually a defense against accusations of using insider information. This is a very tricky area. 

Many years ago I was managing money for a foundation that had a large block of the late founders’ stock in a large, listed deteriorating retail company with some representation from the company on the foundation’s board but not its investment committee. I was urging an immediate plan to move out of the stock as quickly as possible based on the fact I could not find any leading analyst following the company. The foundation’s external lawyers said that a sale would violate the insider selling rules as the foundation knew that the current management was incompetent. The founder’s company soon thereafter went bankrupt and a significant amount of scholarship money was lost. Bottom line: some additional insight is good, but too much is dangerous.

Looking too hard for negative indicators

Over time I have found it difficult to find individuals that have a spotless record of correct decisions. The best are right 2/3rds of the time and perhaps in a very rare instance ¾ of the time. On the other hand there are other people that have a superior history of being wrong. In the current environment certain political leaders and central bankers have been great negative indicators. One of the reasons I am increasingly cautious is the growing enthusiasm for the immediate future. A good example of this is a columnist for a major NY newspaper over the weekend discussed a bullish view of the future which is okay and could be correct. However, he said he could not find anyone that was extremely cautious to somewhat negative. He didn’t look very hard as we have seen significant sales of public stock by well-known investors and an increasing number of Small Cap mutual funds closing to new money additions. Thus, I am confirmed in my cautious attitude, but I must be on guard to the fact that every now and then a negative indicator could be correct.

How smart am I?

My brother tells me that our grandfather warned us that the person on the other side of the trade was likely to be at least as smart as we were and could possibly have better information than we did. This warning predated the SEC, but is as valid today as in the last century. The only way I can deal with this reasoned fear is recognizing that the buyer and seller may well have different time frames that they are being measured. Most of the time the seller has an immediate need for cash and the buyer is looking for a longer-term reward.

Too much attention to today

We can describe yesterday’s price with extreme accuracy to many digits beyond the decimal point. We have the headlines and perhaps more importantly, the buried smaller news articles for today. Almost all of the various pundits will focus on the current. As a long-term investor for my clients and my family, I should be more concerned about future valuations based on future conditions. Clearly, I can not view the future with any degree of precision, but in some ways these outlooks are of much greater value in building and sustaining wealth than the current obsession with precision and today’s market “news.”

When I visit good managers, it is difficult but rewarding to discuss how they see the future.

Too low a discount of expected future returns

In a period of manipulated interest rates there is a tendency to use current rates to discount future cash flows. As the current rates do not take into consideration the business and human risks present today and likely to be in the future, many investors, corporate executives, and investment committees are in my opinion over-valuing future flows of cash. Alternatively, I would suggest that a discounted rate should be the higher of a sound pension fund’s actuarial assumption or the yield on High Yield (junk) bonds to cover the risks and uncertainties. I am having difficulties finding suitable long-term investments meeting these criteria.

What introspections have you done or are likely to do in the future? Please let me know.
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Sunday, June 2, 2013

Sellers Scare Buyers




My grandfather was a successful investor over his lifetime. He cautioned my older brother and me that the person on the other side of a stock trade was probably as smart as we were, if not smarter. As this week and month were drawing to a close on Friday afternoon, the stock market fell sharply. In the last half hour of trading the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell almost 70 points. In a so-called “normal” trading day the number of stocks rising is close to the number declining. On an unusually decisive day the ratio can be as high as 3 to 1, either way. On Friday there was five times the number of decliners than stocks gaining in price for the day. What happened? I don’t know, but my thoughts went to the wisdom of my grandfather. Traders have learned from bitter experience not to fight the tape by going against a strong trend. As one who has learned to take advantage of market disruptions I should have been a buyer, but I wasn’t. During this period of turmoil is it possible, perhaps probable, that the sellers know something? Normally both buyers and sellers can be correct on a given trade because they are using different time frames for their decisions and value the same bit of information differently. I believe the intensity of the selling caused normal buyers to pull back from trading. Compared to brief major price onslaughts in the past, there were few if any effective market stabilizing forces at work. Previously floor-based specialists and “upstairs” trading desks put their capital at risk to calm the market.

Possible explanations

As of this weekend there is no available, credible analysis on what set off the sharp decline but there are three reasonable triggers that could have caused concerns on the part of portfolio managers on the last day of the month.

1.  The market had completed four years from its bottom in March of 2009 and this summer/fall we will have passed six years from the prior peak. Just in the last five months the DJIA has gained 15.3% and the S&P500 14.3%. Some investors, typically in financials, did even better with gross gains of 23%. Clearly there is a strong desire to preserve good to great results in an aging bull market.

2.  Often I have suggested that the fixed income market can be an early warning device for the stock market. Very recently the yield spreads on high yield (junk bonds) has started to widen compared to comparable US Treasury issues. Separately, Barron’s has maintained a confidence index comparing the yield to maturities on selected high quality bonds and intermediate quality issues.  This week the ratio was 73.2 compared to 67.7 a year ago which suggests that there is some concern as to intermediate credits. A further indicator that fixed income investors/savers are looking for credit quality is the interest rate available on money market accounts which dropped to 0.46%, the lowest I remember seeing. Bottom line: I don’t see any Bond bulls.

3.  Quite possibly Japan has replaced China as the major foreign concern. In terms of China we are dealing with a well-advertised slowdown in its economy and a possible return of the Chinese to the commodity markets. What is replacing the China worry is the attempt of the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to utilize monetary quantitative easing. The BOJ is trying to induce a goal of 2% inflation to shakeup an economy that in a real sense has not grown in 24 years. The route that they are taking is to lower the value of the yen relative to all of its main trading partners. Some have called this the first shot in a currency war which already is not sitting well with Japan’s competitors. For some, this eerily looks like the currency war that made the industrial recession into the economic depression of the thirties. The BOJ’s strategy can only work if the US does not taper off its own “QE” and other countries do not retaliate with competitive devaluations. This last week the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve discussed looking into possible procedures for beginning a tapering-off process at some future point.

What to do?

Tops of markets usually don’t occur at convenient times. This weekend I reviewed the major winning positions in our stock portfolios as well as a number of winning positions in funds that we own for institutional and individual clients. In terms of the stocks even though they have advanced significantly, they are selling substantially below what I believe a knowledgeable strategic buyer should pay for a number of unique holdings. Worse, there is an understandable fear that once sold, similar “jewels” will be hard to find at reasonable prices. Perhaps what makes the decision to sell even harder are the attempts by various central banks to push us further along on the risk continuum just as their own balance sheets are taking on the attributes of a highly leveraged shadow lender. Yields on the DJIA are slightly higher and those on the S&P500 close to the yield on the ten-year US Treasury note. (By the way, we will start to see fund and manager advertising which touts 3 and 5 year performance, but the market is focusing on ten year periods as representative of possible future results.) 

My inclination

Recognizing that in all likelihood I will loose some of the gains that my accounts have received in 2013, I will probably hold onto most of our positions waiting for the return of the army of strategic buyers. Please share with me what are you doing or what do you advise me to do. I don’t want to be scared out of position by the sellers.
_______________________
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