Good morning, I’ll keep this brief because I’m on the road again. This market is volatile! I don’t care what the so called experts say. I don’t care what the VIX is. I don’t care whether folks are making money or losing money. It is one of the most volatile and fluid markets I have ever dealt with. Between the president Trump, Jay Powell, and all the Geo political stuff this market changes daily and sometimes multiple times in a day! Unless you sit there and watch it 24/7 and have real time trades there are going to be periods of time when you’re just in the wrong place. Plain and simple. I can’t make it any clearer. I can hear our critics now. You know the ones that are never around when you get something right and always seem to show up when things are difficult. The ones that are always right? Yeah, those folks. They’re already clogging my feed as we speak. They are quick to tell you how they got the best of this trade by buying and holding or what ever is that they do, but the thing about it is this. Where can we see the rest of their perfect trades??? Heck, I want to follow them too. You see, they tell you about the good ones, but they get quiet during the bad ones. Real quiet! Many have argued that buying and holding is the only way to deal with this market. Here’s the thing about that. It works until there is a 10% or greater correction. A better way to say it is that it works until it doesn’t work and when it doesn’t work you don’t just find yourself underperforming as we have in the past week. You find yourself with a huge loss. I said all that to say this. A lot of what we do is to ensure that we don’t get stuck with that huge loss. We’ve been doing this for a long time now. Since the mid  nineties and we’ve only been stuck with one “huge’ loss and that was the year after the pandemic and you all know about that. So again, what we do is insurance and sometimes we have to pay the premium as we did for the last week. That’s our system and that’s what we do. I don’t apologize for it and never will. You are free to follow us, follow someone else or do your own thing. Whatever, works best for you and fits your temperament and risk profile. Contrary to popular belief, one size does not fit all in this business. As I have said many times. Our longterm results speak for themselves.

With all that in mind we ‘ve moved back into the S Fund following president Trumps most recent spat of executive orders. Today’s bump in the market actually resulted from an exception to an executive order he issued yesterday putting a 100% tariff on imported chips. He said that any semiconductor company that was committed to investing in the United States would be exempt from the tax. As a results companies like Apple, Nvidia, and AMD which make up a large percentage of the major indices jumped and so…. as a result, the major indices jumped with them.  Another thing affecting the current market is  actually a development resulting from last weeks bad jobs report. Investors after considering the effects of the report now believe that the Fed will decrease interest rates in September. We will see…. but the main result of all this is that we are back up and running. However, we still anticipate some correction or consolidation in the market which will likely end when the Fed decides to start decreasing rates again. While many folks believe that will happen in September there is no guarantee that will be the fact. It could be that the Fed does not begin decreasing rates until November and I shouldn’t have to tell you what will happen to the market if that’s the case. We’re back in for now, but we will not hesitate to move back to the G Fund again should the market correct as we think it will. If that’s the case we’ll deal with it. One more thing, we also may end up dealing with additional executive orders as they seem to add a new level of volatility to the market….. We pray that God will guide our hand in these things!

Today’s trading has so far generated the following results: our TSP allocation is steady in the G Fund. For comparison, the Dow is trading lower at -0.58%, the Nasdaq is adding  +0.27%, and the S&P 500 is off -0.11%.

S&P 500 rises after Trump’s chip tariffs have broad exemptions: Live updates

The most recent action has left us with the following signals: C-Hold, S-Hold, I-Buy, and F-Buy. We are currently invested at 100/G but will move to 100/S at the close of business today. Our allocation is currently +10.57% not including the days results. Here are the latest posted results:

That’s all for this week. Have a nice day and may God continue to bless your trades!

God bless, Scott 

***Just a reminder that you can review the performance of our allocation at the Web Site TSPTALK.com in the autotracker section under the screen name KyFan1.

I produce and publish this blog as both a ministry and for the benefit of any Federal Government Employee. This is done to offer you some guidance as to how to approach your retirement more financially successful. When it is time for you to retire, I recommend you utilize the services of a Professional Money Manager, who works with a reputable investment firm. He understands the guidance you have already received and he can manage your savings assets utilizing a more advanced investment program into the future.

If you would like to receive more information about this introduction, please feel free to contact me at  KyFan1@aol.com.