Good Evening, The trend so far in August has been for the market to trade on low volume with a poor close and today totally fit the bill. The majority of stocks traded lower in the last hour leaving the Dow and S&P 500 in the red by the closing bell. Breadth was poor with Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.04-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.10-to-1 ratio favored advancers. Volume was weak with approximately 5.9 billion shares changed hands on U.S. compared with the 6.3 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data. All I can say is a repeat of what I said yesterday. This is typical late summer / early fall trading. I have found that it is best to come into August not expecting much. That way anything you might get is a positive surprise. Of course I always try to make money but I keep my expectations real. August and September are historically slow months for the market and to expect anything else is to set yourself up for disappointment. That said, we are in the green so far this month and I thank God for it.
The days trading left us with the following results: Our TSP allotment managed a small gain of +0.16% despite the slow day. For comparison, the Dow was off -0.29%, the Nasdaq was flat at +0.04%, and the S&P 500 slipped -0.14%. Praise God for our small gain. As I said earlier, our goal is to get through these slow months into the fall when seasonality will again be on our side instead of the head wind that it is now.
The days action left us with the following signals: C-Buy, S-Buy, I-Neutral, F-Neutral. We are currently invested at 100/S. Our allocation is now +8.75% for the year not including the days results. Here are the latest posted results:
| 08/08/18 | Prior Prices | ||||
| Fund | G Fund | F Fund | C Fund | S Fund | I Fund |
| Price | 15.8023 | 17.8445 | 40.638 | 53.1487 | 30.6201 |
| $ Change | 0.0013 | 0.0014 | -0.0097 | -0.0982 | -0.0050 |
| % Change day | +0.01% | +0.01% | -0.02% | -0.18% | -0.02% |
| % Change week | +0.04% | -0.07% | +0.62% | +0.84% | +0.48% |
| % Change month | +0.07% | +0.03% | +1.51% | +1.63% | -0.72% |
| % Change year | +1.68% | -1.49% | +8.05% | +9.66% | -0.76% |
| L INC | L 2020 | L 2030 | L 2040 | L 2050 | |
| Price | 20.0099 | 27.6421 | 31.9512 | 34.9492 | 20.3273 |
| $ Change | -0.0005 | -0.0025 | -0.0080 | -0.0113 | -0.0079 |
| % Change day | +0.00% | -0.01% | -0.03% | -0.03% | -0.04% |
| % Change week | +0.15% | +0.22% | +0.38% | +0.45% | +0.51% |
| % Change month | +0.22% | +0.32% | +0.54% | +0.63% | +0.71% |
| % Change year | +2.35% | +2.80% | +3.95% | +4.39% | +4.80% |
