The Big Picture for the Week of January 8, 2012
Yesterday we executed a trade for most "large" accounts buying KLA-Tencor (KLAC). The pick is more of a top down decision (more on that in a moment). The company makes equipment used in manufacturing many types of semiconductor; data storage, LED, sola...
Trade Executed
We executed a (mostly) across the board trade for large accounts on Thursday buying ASX Limited (ASXFF) which is the stock exchange in Australia. The trade obviously increases our exposure to financial stocks and takes us back to Australia after having...
Small Trade
Yesterday we executed a trade for large accounts selling American Tower (AMT). We bought the stock in October 2009 at about $38.60 and sold it yesterday near $59.35. It was generally a great hold for over the two years and the gain obviously was a nice...
What Happens if Correlations Change?
You probably are aware that gold has gotten taken to the woodshed recently. YTD it is still up 9.8% (as measured by client holding GLD) but it is down over 15% since peaking in August.The chart is a very near term comparison of the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD...
Process
In the last few days I've made a couple of references to the 2012 Outlook article I've been working on for Seeking Alpha. In the follow up questions that came back on the original submission there was a question that in the context of the article did n...
Portfolio Expectations
Over the weekend I spelled out a scenario where I think at some point in 2012 there will be a large, fundamentally unjustified lift in the S&P 500. I also said that I would sell the rally if it happened. I think it is plausible as opposed to the im...
Thinking Long Term
I spent most of the Patriots Redskins game yesterday working on a 2012 outlook article for Seeking Alpha. I had answered one question for Saturday's post and then the other 19 yesterday. This was interesting in terms of comparing how I answered the que...
What Is Diversification?
Yesterday I found this post by NYU professor Aswath Damodaron that tried to reconcile the divergence between Mark Cuban saying diversification is for idiots and John Bogle's (essentially) saying that diversification is all that matters, advocating owni...
The Slog Continues
By now you've read a dozen articles ripping into the Friday's jobs data. The big bone of contention of course was the extent to which the decline in the headline rate dropped to 8.6% due to a large contraction in the labor force.Whether you call it new...
Sunday Morning Coffee
In the comments of yesterday's post a little discussion broke out about my definition of large accounts and mid sized accounts or more correctly the differences, as I see them, in portfolio construction based on account size.The relevance could be that...
The Big Picture for the Week of December 4, 2011
A week ago Thursday I disclosed selling our position in Pro Shares Ultra Short S&P 500 due in part to believing that after a very fast decline in the market, an equally fast snapback was possible. By the time yesterday morning rolled around the SPX...
Our Current Reality
Wednesday's market action had all the music, lighting, choreography and party-like atmosphere of an Earth Wind and Fire concert (I tried to find a picture of the Ohio Players in this context but couldn't find one I liked).We are in a period where we ha...
