Good Evening, If you watched today’s market like I did then it probably drove you nuts. The market fluctuated but remained up marginally prior to the release of the last Fed meeting minutes, then spiked after the minutes were released only to reverse and sell off ending the day well in the red. Just when you thought you had figured out what kind of day you were having the market threw you a curve ball. It appears that the market liked the Fed meeting minutes deducing that the Fed was not overly concerned about inflation and would continue with rate hikes as planned or to put it simply there were no plans to increase the pace of rate hikes. Then treasury yields reacted to the the minutes by anticipating further rate hikes and rising. That’s when the market sold off into the close. OK, I know I always blame the machines but is really hard to place the blame on human traders that were already expected the hikes which have been well telegraphed by the Fed. By the matter of fact, expectations for a quarter-point hike at the Fed’s next meeting in March are currently 93.5 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. So what’s changed? Everyone and I mean everyone is and has been expecting these rate hikes. That only explanation that I have is that the machines were programmed to sell on certain words in the Fed Statement. If I am correct and that was the only reason for the selling then we can expect a nice snap back rally in the next day or so and folks that sold will get squeezed hard. Either way, I’ll watch my charts and play the action that’s in front of me. The only problem I have is that sometimes it’s really hard to figure out why things are really happening…….but in the end that doesn’t really change a thing.
The days trading left us with the following results: Our TSP allotment reversed from a nice gain and gave up -0.55%. For comparison, the Dow dropped -0.67%, the Nasdaq -0.22%, and the S&P 500 -0.55%.
The days action left us with the following signals: C-Neutral, S-Neutral, I-Neutral, F-Sell. We are currently invested at 100/C. Our allocation is now +0.85% on the year not including the days results. Here are the latest posted results.
| 02/20/18 | Prior Prices | ||||
| Fund | G Fund | F Fund | C Fund | S Fund | I Fund |
| Price | 15.595 | 17.7176 | 38.3087 | 48.6769 | 31.1181 |
| $ Change | 0.0047 | -0.0144 | -0.2231 | -0.3401 | -0.1520 |
| % Change day | +0.03% | -0.08% | -0.58% | -0.69% | -0.49% |
| % Change week | +0.03% | -0.08% | -0.58% | -0.69% | -0.49% |
| % Change month | +0.15% | -1.07% | -3.66% | -2.82% | -3.95% |
| % Change year | +0.35% | -2.19% | +1.86% | +0.43% | +0.85% |
| L INC | L 2020 | L 2030 | L 2040 | L 2050 | |
| Price | 19.6368 | 27.0527 | 30.9979 | 33.7923 | 19.5962 |
| $ Change | -0.0189 | -0.0505 | -0.1071 | -0.1400 | -0.0931 |
| % Change day | -0.10% | -0.19% | -0.34% | -0.41% | -0.47% |
| % Change week | -0.10% | -0.19% | -0.34% | -0.41% | -0.47% |
| % Change month | -0.65% | -1.21% | -2.20% | -2.63% | -2.99% |
| % Change year | +0.44% | +0.60% | +0.85% | +0.94% | +1.03% |
