Good Evening, Today the market continued it’s sell off with the same issues in the forefront, energy and tech. Also adding to those concerns was poor performance in the retail sector, namely Target (TGT). The S Fund finally generated another sell signal today as we anticipated that it would. So we put out an alert for an interfund transfer to 100/G. I will admit that I could have managed this sell off a lot better than I did. That’s on me. I’m not making any excuses. I ignored my charts in favor of strong fundamental argument and positive seasonality. The thing about fundamentals is that the a very good 90% of the time. Very Good! I won’t deny that. However, when they lie to you they really lie. When they are bad they are really bad! Coming into this fall season we had record unemployment, a healthy GDP and strong corporate earnings backed by a big tax cut. The fundamentals were screaming buy buy buy. However, at the same time the charts where saying wait just a minute. Many of them were neutral at best and as we all know too well, many of them actually put up timely sell signals. I made a huge mistake by not selling the S Fund on the first sell signal. On top of that, still other indicators such as the Volatility index better known as the VIX were telling us weeks ago that this wasn’t such a healthy market. Had I listened to them as I had done almost my entire investing career my accounts would be a lot fatter than they are now. A lot!!! I told you at the beginning of this blog that I am not making any excuses. I absolutely could have and should have handled this selloff better. I along most investors became too complacent in the years since 2009. We all became accustomed to the many V shaped recoveries that occurred and made us look like fools every time we took defensive action and sold. So we said to ourselves that this time would be no different because the fundamentals were just looking too good. We said that we could ignore and charts and that if we didn’t ignore them and sold we would end up looking foolish even though we noted that the character of the market had clearly changed. Yes this time it would be safe and even prudent to ignore our charts. Never Again! That error cost me money here and on the street. If you don’t get anything else out of this, get this! SELL is not a dirty word. Capitol preservation is the most important part of investing! We forgot our motto around here. We forgot the most important thing that we knew in the years since 2009. It’s not what you make that’s most important. It’s what you keep!! Yes we gave up a some profit that we could have kept, but we still have almost all of the profits that we made in those years. I thank God for that and for His guidance then and now. We’ll make those profits up and move beyond that to be sure. Nonetheless, I will still lament over the 10% that got away.
The days action left us with the following results: Our TSP allotment dropped -1.62%. For comparison, the Dow fell -2.21%, the Nasdaq -1.70% and the S&P 500 -1.82%.
The days action left us with the following signals: C-Neutral, S-Sell, I-Neutral, F-Neutral. As of the close of business today we are invested at 100/G. Our allocation is now -2.61% on the year not including the days results. Here are the latest posted results:
| 11/19/18 | Prior Prices | ||||
| Fund | G Fund | F Fund | C Fund | S Fund | I Fund |
| Price | 15.9366 | 17.7961 | 38.495 | 47.7017 | 28.1066 |
| $ Change | 0.0042 | 0.0106 | -0.6503 | -1.0486 | 0.0028 |
| % Change day | +0.03% | +0.06% | -1.66% | -2.15% | +0.01% |
| % Change week | +0.03% | +0.06% | -1.66% | -2.15% | +0.01% |
| % Change month | +0.16% | +0.51% | -0.61% | -1.28% | +0.01% |
| % Change year | +2.55% | -1.76% | +2.35% | -1.58% | -8.91% |
| L INC | L 2020 | L 2030 | L 2040 | L 2050 | |
| Price | 19.8605 | 27.214 | 30.7127 | 33.2664 | 19.1825 |
| $ Change | -0.0445 | -0.0972 | -0.2260 | -0.2952 | -0.1957 |
| % Change day | -0.22% | -0.36% | -0.73% | -0.88% | -1.01% |
| % Change week | -0.22% | -0.36% | -0.73% | -0.88% | -1.01% |
| % Change month | +0.06% | +0.00% | -0.20% | -0.28% | -0.36% |
| % Change year | +1.59% | +1.20% | -0.08% | -0.63% | -1.10% |
