It Is Not Different This Time - It Is Worse [View article]
@shourey Production boomed because of Science and technology NOT because of any policy of President Obama. We would not have had the oil and gas production today without the science to find new oil fields (ie the Bakken and others) and the technology (fracking, horizontal drilling, etc.)
If production has boomed why have gas prices gone up under president Obama? The reason why prices have gone up...is Obama's EPA and its regulations. It is not cost effective for refiners to build a new refinery to refine crude for gasoline for Americans.
The high production is a double edged sword, because of the high production here, our price of crude oil [WTI] is much lower than Brent. Because of that refiners are choosing to buy crude at WTI prices, refine it, and export it to the rest of the world for the Brent Prices. Look at the charts of the refiners over the since the last time Brent & WTI traded at the same price which was October 18 2010, the data backs up my point.
How To Be Protected Before The Next Market Crash [View article]
In your hedging your long portfolio, the only problem I see is that SPY, and SDY and 96% correlated. I would keep SDY because it has a higher dividend yield than the SPY, and replace, SPY with an international ETF like the WisdomTree Emerging Markets Equity Income ETF (DEM) which has a 82% correlation to the SDY.
The results using ETFreplay.com since July 13th 2007, which is DEM inception date.
Your Hedging Portfolio: 43.8% Total Return with 7.4% Volatility. Your Portfolio with my suggestion: 47.1% Total Return with 7.9% volatility.
So with my single improvement you get:
-A Better risk adjusted return. -More Diversification -Lowers your equity correlation to each other
Gold Takes Out Major Support: Next Stop $1,350 [View article]
I disagree you, gold has not broken its support, using the spot price, not the price of the GLD, as I show in my article I wrote yesterday, there is a strong support at the $1526.50 level, which has been tested twice and held, so that is the level I am watching, if it breaks that the next level of support is at $1433.40, but I believe that gold will hold the $1526.50 level.
I agree with Jonathan, I hold shares of RNF @ around $46/share. I knew that there would be risks in buying knowing that this year would be full of the maintenance outages, upgrades and expansions, while they were not producing, thus lowering the distribution. My purchase @ $46/share was my initial position, and I will be adding to it this year in anticipation of 2014 and 2015 when everything is upgraded and expanded distributions will grow. RNF has support between the 30-32 level so if that level holds I will be purchasing more.
By a 75-24 margin, the Senate has passed a non-binding vote of approval for a bill allowing states to collect sales taxes from online retailers with $1M+ in annual sales and no presence within a given state's borders. The margin of victory suggests a filibuster shouldn't be a problem when a binding vote is made. Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) have already begun collecting in a number of large states, and many investors have already assumed collections will expand in time. (previous) [View news story]
Let me ask you this, how many of the 46 million people on food stamps do you think are investing in the stock market? If over 10% of the population needs assistance just to buy food, there is no way they can afford to be buying stocks, so a rising stock market does not help them at all!
Stocks And Commodities Signaling A Downturn [View article]
To answer your question.
-No I have not bought any options because Options trading is not allowed in my Roth IRA. As for the VIX, no I do not buy anything VIX related for two reasons.
-Most VIX products are ETNs, and I stay away from ETNs, and second, volatility is a trading vehicle, and I only like picking investment options that I could hold for a long period of time.
If I was absolutely forced to choose a VIX product, to minimize my risk I would choose either
5 ETFs For Retirement Income For Less Active Investors [View article]
Very good article, it is very similar to my article I wrote last year.
A couple thoughts, I assume since I didnt see anything that each ETF is weighted equally? Also you seem to have overlap with FGD, and DTH, which are both international dividend ETFs. So I ran your portfolio up against mine using etfreplay.com from March 11 2009 which is the farthest back data goes for LWC.
-Your Portfolio: +144.9% total return with 18.6% volatility.
Risk adjusted return: 144.9/18.6= 7.79% return/unit of risk
-My Portfolio:+119.6% total return with 11.3% volatility.
Risk adjusted return: 119.6/11.3=10.58% return/unit of risk.
The main difference in our portfolio's is I weighted mine by volatility, so less volatile funds got more weight in the portfolio. Your portfolio is a good start, if it were me i'd swap out FGD, and go with a more US centric dividend ETF like the iShares High Dividend Equity ETF (HDV), or WisdomTree Equity Income ETF (DHS). Just a couple things to think about.
The Coming Crash In The Bond Market [View article]
I wrote an article last year in May, where I constructed a simple rising rates portfolio for when inflation kicks in. The portfolio has no leveraged inverse treasury funds like TBT.
My Portfolio I created in my article:
iShares Floating Rate Note (FLOT) PIMCO 1-5 Year US TIPS Index ETF (STPZ) PowerShares Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt (PCY) ProShares Short 20+ Year Treasury (TBF) iShares High Dividend Equity (HDV)
At the time of writing the article the rate on the 10-year treasury was 1.70%.
The results of the portfolio I created since then compared to popular bond funds:
-My Portfolio: 5.5% Return with 3.0% Volatility OR 1.83% Return /volatility -AGG: 1.3% Return with 2.4% Volatility OR 0.54% Return /Volatility -LQD: 5.8% Return with 4.1% Volatility OR 1.41% Return/ Volatility -TIP: 1.4% Return with 4.3% Volatility OR 0.32% Return/Volatilty
Fed Stress Tests: Ally Financial is the only bank not meeting the Fed standards. All of the other 18 holding companies showed a Tier 1 Common Ratio higher than 5% under the central bank's severe loss scenario. [View news story]
As noted on CNBC today, US Bank stress test DO NOT take into account what would happen to derivatives held by banks. Where as European bank stress tests include derivatives in their stress tests.
5 Reasons The S&P 500 Could Fall 20% By The End Of 2013 [View article]
GHargis Thank you for your comments I agree with you. With the massive amount of QE in the market, this has led to inflation in food and energy prices. There is very little or no economic growth. So what is the name for the condition where there is a lack of growth, and rising inflation? STAGFLATION !!!!
5 Reasons The S&P 500 Could Fall 20% By The End Of 2013 [View article]
Thank you for your comment. I have a chart for you and everyone else to look at that shows the Federal Reserve Balance sheet total. TO answer your question QE was not responsible for the 2008 financial crisis, it was housing, loan underwriting standards, and excessive leverage at financial institutions.The chart clearly shows there was no excessive QE leading up to the financial crisis of 2008.
The money management business inspires a lively exchange at the Barron's Roundtable, with Brian Rogers' liking of Legg Mason (LM) as either a value or takeover play getting the thumbs up from Mario Gabelli, but a razzing from Bill Gross who says the stock-picking industry is in secular decline thanks to ETFs. Gabelli to Gross: "If you want to preach in favor of mindless investing, we don't have to stand by." [View news story]
A great example Gabelli Small Cap Growth AAA (GABSX) compared to the Vanguard Small Cap Growth ETF (VBK) since VBK inception on 1/30/2004.
Compared to the S&P 500 (SPY), since Sep 17th 2009 which is as far back as data goes for all 4 funds:
Portfolio Total Return: 46% Portfolio Volatility: 8.9%
SPY Total Return: 40.5% SPY Volatility: 18.1%
So overall nice idea for equal weighting sectors, and mixing in Gold, Preferred stocks, and Emerging Market debt, but you could cut your transaction costs alot by owning EQL instead of owning around 15+ stocks, and still have a portfolio that has a Higher return than the SPY, and with almost half as much volatility.
Picking Shares Of Intel Out Of The 'Old Tech' Waste Basket [View article]
Douglas,
Thank you for your comment. Well I have proven Cramer wrong earlier this year, he said on his "Six in 60" segment when he got to the last company, Barrick Gold (ABX) he said, "Just can't stand these gold miners, they are awful. You want to own gold, own the GLD."
So I wrote an article about looking for quality gold miners and developed a screen to find them to challenge Jim Cramer on his comment.
The results since the article was written on Jan 25th 2012:
So My picks greatly outperformed the GLD by a wide margin, as well as the GDX which is the ETF for Gold Miners. Also, the results dont account for dividends, just price return, so the outperformance is even greater because the GLD does not pay dividends.
Picking Shares Of Intel Out Of The 'Old Tech' Waste Basket [View article]
Thank you for your comment. Intel may be a falling knife, but it has a great balance sheet, pays a great well covered dividend [39% payout ratio], that is covered by increasing cash flows, and plenty of earnings.
It Is Not Different This Time - It Is Worse [View article]
If production has boomed why have gas prices gone up under president Obama? The reason why prices have gone up...is Obama's EPA and its regulations. It is not cost effective for refiners to build a new refinery to refine crude for gasoline for Americans.
The high production is a double edged sword, because of the high production here, our price of crude oil [WTI] is much lower than Brent. Because of that refiners are choosing to buy crude at WTI prices, refine it, and export it to the rest of the world for the Brent Prices. Look at the charts of the refiners over the since the last time Brent & WTI traded at the same price which was October 18 2010, the data backs up my point.
Major refiners returns since that date:
Valero Energy Corporation (VLO): +143%
Tesoro Corporation (TSO): +299%
HollyFrontier Corp. (HFC): +208%
How To Be Protected Before The Next Market Crash [View article]
The results using ETFreplay.com since July 13th 2007, which is DEM inception date.
Your Hedging Portfolio: 43.8% Total Return with 7.4% Volatility.
Your Portfolio with my suggestion: 47.1% Total Return with 7.9% volatility.
So with my single improvement you get:
-A Better risk adjusted return.
-More Diversification
-Lowers your equity correlation to each other
Just a thought.
Gold Takes Out Major Support: Next Stop $1,350 [View article]
http://seekingalpha.co...
Bear Of The Day: Rentech Nitrogen [View article]
By a 75-24 margin, the Senate has passed a non-binding vote of approval for a bill allowing states to collect sales taxes from online retailers with $1M+ in annual sales and no presence within a given state's borders. The margin of victory suggests a filibuster shouldn't be a problem when a binding vote is made. Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) have already begun collecting in a number of large states, and many investors have already assumed collections will expand in time. (previous) [View news story]
Stocks And Commodities Signaling A Downturn [View article]
-No I have not bought any options because Options trading is not allowed in my Roth IRA. As for the VIX, no I do not buy anything VIX related for two reasons.
-Most VIX products are ETNs, and I stay away from ETNs, and second, volatility is a trading vehicle, and I only like picking investment options that I could hold for a long period of time.
If I was absolutely forced to choose a VIX product, to minimize my risk I would choose either
iPath S&P 500 Dynamic VIX ETN (XVZ) OR
UBS ETRACS Daily Long-Short VIX ETN (XVIX)
5 ETFs For Retirement Income For Less Active Investors [View article]
A couple thoughts, I assume since I didnt see anything that each ETF is weighted equally? Also you seem to have overlap with FGD, and DTH, which are both international dividend ETFs. So I ran your portfolio up against mine using etfreplay.com from March 11 2009 which is the farthest back data goes for LWC.
-Your Portfolio: +144.9% total return with 18.6% volatility.
Risk adjusted return: 144.9/18.6= 7.79% return/unit of risk
-My Portfolio:+119.6% total return with 11.3% volatility.
Risk adjusted return: 119.6/11.3=10.58% return/unit of risk.
Yield Comparison [My Portfolio]
Weight Yield W*Y
30% 4.78% 1.43400%
25% 6.65% 1.66250%
20% 7.88% 1.57600%
15% 6.22% 0.93300%
10% 1.43% 0.14300%
Portfolio Yield 5.75%
Yield Comparison [Your Portfolio]
Weight Yield W*Y
20% 4.95% 0.99000%
20% 6.55% 1.31000%
20% 4.10% 0.82000%
20% 4.60% 0.92000%
20% 5.99% 1.19800%
Portfolio Yield 5.24%
The main difference in our portfolio's is I weighted mine by volatility, so less volatile funds got more weight in the portfolio. Your portfolio is a good start, if it were me i'd swap out FGD, and go with a more US centric dividend ETF like the iShares High Dividend Equity ETF (HDV), or WisdomTree Equity Income ETF (DHS). Just a couple things to think about.
http://seekingalpha.co...
The Coming Crash In The Bond Market [View article]
My Portfolio I created in my article:
iShares Floating Rate Note (FLOT)
PIMCO 1-5 Year US TIPS Index ETF (STPZ)
PowerShares Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt (PCY)
ProShares Short 20+ Year Treasury (TBF)
iShares High Dividend Equity (HDV)
At the time of writing the article the rate on the 10-year treasury was 1.70%.
The results of the portfolio I created since then compared to popular bond funds:
-My Portfolio: 5.5% Return with 3.0% Volatility OR 1.83% Return /volatility
-AGG: 1.3% Return with 2.4% Volatility OR 0.54% Return /Volatility
-LQD: 5.8% Return with 4.1% Volatility OR 1.41% Return/ Volatility
-TIP: 1.4% Return with 4.3% Volatility OR 0.32% Return/Volatilty
http://seekingalpha.co...
Fed Stress Tests: Ally Financial is the only bank not meeting the Fed standards. All of the other 18 holding companies showed a Tier 1 Common Ratio higher than 5% under the central bank's severe loss scenario. [View news story]
5 Reasons The S&P 500 Could Fall 20% By The End Of 2013 [View article]
5 Reasons The S&P 500 Could Fall 20% By The End Of 2013 [View article]
http://bit.ly/WZMDj3
The money management business inspires a lively exchange at the Barron's Roundtable, with Brian Rogers' liking of Legg Mason (LM) as either a value or takeover play getting the thumbs up from Mario Gabelli, but a razzing from Bill Gross who says the stock-picking industry is in secular decline thanks to ETFs. Gabelli to Gross: "If you want to preach in favor of mindless investing, we don't have to stand by." [View news story]
Gabelli Fund: +49.21%
Vanguard ETF: +94.80%
So score one for the ETF.
Gabelli Fund expense Ratio: 1.42% + .25% 12b-1= 1.67%
Vanguard ETF expense Ratio: 0.10%
Score another one for the ETF.
So for an extra 1.57% in fees you can Underperform an ETF targeting the same group of stocks [ small caps] by 45.49%.
A Simple Retirement Portfolio Anyone Can Build (Equal Sector Weights): Year-End Update [View article]
ALPS Equal Sector Weight ETF (EQL) Yield: 3.19%
-The index is comprised in equal proportions of the nine Select Sector SPDR Indexes.
iShares Gold Trust ETF (IAU)
PowerShares Emerging Markets Sovereign Debt Portfolio ETF (PCY)
SPDR Wells Fargo Preferred Stock ETF (PSK)
Using http://bit.ly/WONj8j
Allocations:
EQL: 25%
IAU: 25%
PCY: 25%
PSK: 25%
Compared to the S&P 500 (SPY), since Sep 17th 2009 which is as far back as data goes for all 4 funds:
Portfolio Total Return: 46%
Portfolio Volatility: 8.9%
SPY Total Return: 40.5%
SPY Volatility: 18.1%
So overall nice idea for equal weighting sectors, and mixing in Gold, Preferred stocks, and Emerging Market debt, but you could cut your transaction costs alot by owning EQL instead of owning around 15+ stocks, and still have a portfolio that has a Higher return than the SPY, and with almost half as much volatility.
Picking Shares Of Intel Out Of The 'Old Tech' Waste Basket [View article]
Thank you for your comment. Well I have proven Cramer wrong earlier this year, he said on his "Six in 60" segment when he got to the last company, Barrick Gold (ABX) he said, "Just can't stand these gold miners, they are awful. You want to own gold, own the GLD."
So I wrote an article about looking for quality gold miners and developed a screen to find them to challenge Jim Cramer on his comment.
The results since the article was written on Jan 25th 2012:
(RGLD) : +23.82%
(AUY) : +23.17%
(FNV) : +33.54%
(GLD) : +3.19%
(GDX) : -7.29%
So My picks greatly outperformed the GLD by a wide margin, as well as the GDX which is the ETF for Gold Miners. Also, the results dont account for dividends, just price return, so the outperformance is even greater because the GLD does not pay dividends.
Link to my Gold Miner Article:
http://bit.ly/11lzFMG
Picking Shares Of Intel Out Of The 'Old Tech' Waste Basket [View article]