Good Evening, The market had another sluggish day today as it dealt with continued concerns over a trade war and transition of White House staff. The appointment of Larry Kudlow, CNBC commentator as Chief Economic Adviser should ease some of the tariff concerns as he is a strong advocate of free trade. All that considered, I will repeat my mantra from my last few blogs which is that the market was due for a pullback anyway. For the most part this stuff is just been a convenient excuse for the market to do what it wanted to do. The media has to have something to write about and this administration has kept them quite busy. So what we are really concerned with is how all this effects our Thrift allocation. There are two dynamics at work here. They are fear of a trade war and a stronger dollar. Of course we make all our investment decisions based on technical analysis not on the news. That said our charts are confirming what we are seeing in the market. The chart for the S Fund has been becoming slightly stronger than the chart for the C Fund. This is because the S Fund is made up of smaller stocks than the C Fund which #1 Do business domestically and are not effected by international trade and #2 Which benefit from a stronger dollar. Both of these issues are current trends. If concerns about an escalating trade war continue and I believe they will, look for investment in small and mid cap stocks increase and investment in large cap stocks to decrease. That is the reason the the Dow Jones industrial which is made up of large international corporations such as Boeing and Caterpillar took such a big hit yesterday. Given the larger macroeconomic picture, I see the US economy remaining strong for the intermediate future. Thus we took this opportunity to exit our position in the C Fund and will be invested with 100% in the S Fund as of the close of business today. Our main task now will be monitor these charts and be ready to move our money again should market sentiment shift back to large caps.
The days trading left us with the following results: Our TSP allotment slipped slightly at -0.08%. For comparison, the Dow added +0.47%, the Nasdaq dropped -0.20%, and the S&P 500 was off -0.08%.
The days action left us with the following signals: C-Buy, S-Buy, I-Buy, F-Neutral. As of the close of business today we are invested with 100% in the S Fund. Our allocation is now +2.24% on the year not including the days results. Here are the latest posted results.
| 03/14/18 | Prior Prices | ||||
| Fund | G Fund | F Fund | C Fund | S Fund | I Fund |
| Price | 15.6214 | 17.7782 | 38.8358 | 50.1436 | 30.8974 |
| $ Change | 0.0012 | 0.0283 | -0.2132 | -0.2163 | -0.1164 |
| % Change day | +0.01% | +0.16% | -0.55% | -0.43% | -0.38% |
| % Change week | +0.04% | +0.36% | -1.30% | -0.76% | -0.31% |
| % Change month | +0.11% | +0.24% | +1.41% | +4.06% | +0.46% |
| % Change year | +0.52% | -1.86% | +3.26% | +3.46% | +0.14% |
| L INC | L 2020 | L 2030 | L 2040 | L 2050 | |
| Price | 19.7068 | 27.1848 | 31.219 | 34.0675 | 19.7736 |
| $ Change | -0.0158 | -0.0413 | -0.0872 | -0.1134 | -0.0756 |
| % Change day | -0.08% | -0.15% | -0.28% | -0.33% | -0.38% |
| % Change week | -0.13% | -0.28% | -0.53% | -0.63% | -0.72% |
| % Change month | +0.40% | +0.62% | +1.00% | +1.18% | +1.34% |
| % Change year | +0.80% | +1.10% | +1.57% | +1.76% | +1.94% |
