Good Evening, The wild ride continued today as the market reversed course and sold off after Democrats increased their calls for the impeachment of President Donald Trump. Also contributing to the slide were harsh remarks made concerning trade with China at the United Nations today by President Trump. Up to now they political stuff hasn’t bothered the market too much. It has become mostly immune to the constant feuding between Democrats and Republicans. However, serious consideration of impeachment proceedings grabbed the market’s attention. The action was clearly and I mean clearly driven by computer algorithms keying off of the impeachment news. I used to think that these algorithms were programmed with the objective of being faster to the obvious trade than slower thinking and reacting humans. However, I now know that is not the case. The programming of these algorithms is much more devious than simply making the best trade faster. These algorithms are clearly programmed to take advantage of slower reacting and thinking humans through market manipulation. Giving no consideration to which direction the market is going they buy or sell high volumes of stocks at rapid rates moving the market in whatever direction they choose. This rapid movement then convinces the slower thinking and reacting humans into buying or selling stocks in a panicked reaction to whatever the current situation might be. The algorithms then scoop up stocks at discounted prices at the expense of traders who hastily sold them. Regardless of whether the market moves up or down they make money off the movement by faking out unsuspecting humans. In simple terms, they don’t make money by making good investments in solid companies. They make money by buying and selling the market movement. They could care less about individual stocks or investors. Only about moving stocks as a group. As far as I’m concerned this practice if not dishonest is border line dishonest and should be banned by the SEC. It undermines market integrity and trust. All that said, you have to ask yourself if today’s action was real of not? Was it legitimate or will it simply reverse tomorrow or the next day and punish everyone who sold to the algorithm masters benefit? There is never a way to tell for sure these days but my bet is on the latter scenario. In the end you just have to have a long term market plan and stick with it as best you can. The only way to accomplish that is to keep a close eye on your charts.
The days trading left us with the following results: Our TSP allotment gave up -0.84%. For comparison, the Dow fell -0.53%, the Nasdaq -1.46%, and the S&P 500 -0.84%.
The days action left us with the following signals: C-Buy, S-Buy, I-Buy, F-Neutral. We are currently invested at 100/C. Our allocation is now +7.64% on the year not including the days results. Here are the latest posted results:
| 09/23/19 | Prior Prices | ||||
| Fund | G Fund | F Fund | C Fund | S Fund | I Fund |
| Price | 16.2729 | 19.6546 | 43.5405 | 52.6388 | 30.4047 |
| $ Change | 0.0021 | 0.0486 | -0.0039 | -0.0062 | -0.1367 |
| % Change day | +0.01% | +0.25% | -0.01% | -0.01% | -0.45% |
| % Change week | +0.01% | +0.25% | -0.01% | -0.01% | -0.45% |
| % Change month | +0.11% | -0.71% | +2.35% | +2.89% | +3.43% |
| % Change year | +1.75% | +8.33% | +21.11% | +19.70% | +13.82% |
| L INC | L 2020 | L 2030 | L 2040 | L 2050 | |
| Price | 20.7604 | 28.6343 | 33.2085 | 36.3154 | 21.0978 |
| $ Change | -0.0021 | -0.0056 | -0.0253 | -0.0347 | -0.0239 |
| % Change day | -0.01% | -0.02% | -0.08% | -0.10% | -0.11% |
| % Change week | -0.01% | -0.02% | -0.08% | -0.10% | -0.11% |
| % Change month | +0.62% | +0.78% | +1.67% | +1.99% | +2.26% |
| % Change year | +5.44% | +6.87% | +12.05% | +14.05% | +15.73% |
