Good Evening, Today stocks managed to stay in the green for most of the day but dropped off in the afternoon with the major indices coming in mixed on the day. The midweek reversal followed by a not so bad day today left with indices with their first gains for the month of December, normally the best month of the year. Nevertheless, barring a miracle they will all post losses in the range of nine percent for the month which will make this December the worst month for stocks since February of 2009 in the midst of the financial crisis. The bottom line is that we had a nice day or two but a couple of nice days does not constitute a bottom. Bottoming is a process and we’re likely in for more volatility before this is through. The thing to realize is that every time you have a few good days there will be folks that will proclaim a bottom. I call them serial bottom callers. They are all out to be the first ones to call the bottom so they can have their day in the sun. It you look closely into their record, the majority if not all of them are wrong many more times than they are right. Nobody and I mean nobody knows when the bottom will come. Right now my indicators are still in the sell mode. All of them! As I already mentioned bottoming is process. The V shaped recoveries that occurred so much in the past nine years are actually very very rare. Those occurred so often in recent years only as a result of the Feds quantitative easing program and those days are gone. In a normal market you will have a series of highs and lows and only after the highs are higher and the lows are higher do you know that you have a bottom in. When you utilize a trend following system like we do you’ll likely miss the early gains when a bottom is put in. But more importantly you wont get sucked in before the bottom is in. Folks, this market could still go down and it could still go down a lot! Jumping back in on the way down which is to say without an established bottom is like swimming on a beach with a shark warning. You might have a nice swim and you might get eaten alive too. Waiting until you have an established up trend is more like going back in the water when the warning is lifted. Sure you missed some nice swimming time but you still have your body in tact to swim a long time safely. And isn’t that really what we want to do? To invest safely? I don’t know about you but gambling is not for me. A good trend following strategy like we use will limit your gains just a little but it will also limit your losses a lot. In the end you will keep much more which by the way is our motto here. Its not what you make that’s important. It’s what you keep! Never get away from that concept and your TSP account will keep putting in new highs!
The days market left us with the following results: Our TSP allotment was steady in the G Fund. For comparison, the Dow fell -0.33%, the Nasdaq was up +0.08%, and the S&P 500 slipped -0.12%. Not bad but hardly inspiring confidence.
The weeks action left us with the following signals: C-Sell, S-Sell, I-Sell, F-Buy. We are currently invested at 100/G. Our allocation is now -3.86% on the year not including the days results. Here are the latest posted results.
| 12/27/18 | Prior Prices | ||||
| Fund | G Fund | F Fund | C Fund | S Fund | I Fund |
| Price | 15.987 | 18.092 | 35.6841 | 43.4253 | 26.383 |
| $ Change | 0.0012 | 0.0404 | 0.3064 | 0.1806 | -0.0917 |
| % Change day | +0.01% | +0.22% | +0.87% | +0.42% | -0.35% |
| % Change week | +0.05% | +0.17% | +3.01% | +3.16% | +1.00% |
| % Change month | +0.22% | +1.55% | -9.71% | -11.82% | -6.00% |
| % Change year | +2.87% | -0.13% | -5.12% | -10.40% | -14.50% |
| L INC | L 2020 | L 2030 | L 2040 | L 2050 | |
| Price | 19.6436 | 26.704 | 29.4544 | 31.6104 | 18.0793 |
| $ Change | 0.0218 | 0.0422 | 0.0840 | 0.1051 | 0.0669 |
| % Change day | +0.11% | +0.16% | +0.29% | +0.33% | +0.37% |
| % Change week | +0.54% | +0.80% | +1.51% | +1.78% | +2.02% |
| % Change month | -1.55% | -2.51% | -5.23% | -6.29% | -7.23% |
| % Change year | +0.48% | -0.69% | -4.17% | -5.58% | -6.79% |
