Wag the Dog

     Two days from this post, the current President of the United States is going to visit my home town of Evansville,In. This political rally will take place before a packed house at our new arena in the downtown and there will also be a huge crowd of protesters outside carrying signs rallying against Donald Trump. Here is a president who has had two of his campaign organizers convicted of crimes, who has routinely lied to the American public, who has been caught having an affair with a porn actress and a playboy model, then caught buying their silence for the purpose of winning the presidential election and currently is embroiled in an investigation that he colluded with the Russians to influence our election. In spite of all this, he still has the support of millions of voters and can attract thousands of supporters at every event. How can this be? Here's my take; it's the stock market that is the tail that wags the dog. The juice that the Donald has harnessed is the unrivaled ascent of our US stock market since his election. His support is based on bloated retirement accounts, jobs that a healthy economy can support, businessmen who are making fortunes running factories, wall street pros who manage our markets, and wealthy individuals who are getting wealthier by being invested in stocks. The recent tax cut enacted by Congress has given new life to our stock market by increasing the earnings of most American companies. Another powerful force unleashed by Trump is the deregulation of many industries. The combination of deregulation and tax cuts for businesses will prop-up earnings for the duration of his presidency assuming that it goes full term. Forget morality, forget human decency,and the dignity of the presidential office, it all comes down to money and the stock market at this time. On Thursday of this week, the Haves will be inside cheering on their hero and all others will be outside carrying signs of protest. What will change things besides a new chief executive? In my opinion, interest rates. When interest rates get to a level that causes investors to lose interest in stocks and choose safe but attractive alternatives, then some of the steam will escape from Trump's boilers. Right now the Stock Market has little competition for those seeking yield, price appreciation, and the safety of numbers. Our president has recently chastised his Federal Reserve Chairman for his intention to raise rates-a threat to Trumps powers. Further evidence is that Trump routinely uses the Dow Industrial Index as a metric for his performance as president. Someone recently told me that the stock market isn't everything. It is to the Donald.

Change

 One thing is certain in investing in stocks of companies and that is change. Change in the business of the company, change in the valuation, and change of management. I can't think of a single industry that isn't undergoing tremendous change right now. The computer industry is a perfect example. Back in the early 1980's, Apple computers were the rage. They had 64k of RAM and no hard drive. If you wanted to store your work, you bought an external 5 1/4 floppy drive. The whole outfit with a dot matrix printer cost well over $5000. Suddenly, IBM came out with the PC, causing the Apple 2E and 2C sales to plummet. I used to buy Apple computers at yard sales cheap and clean them up, add some software games, then resell them to people who thought they were left-out of the computer age. Then along came the Internet and some internet provider companies started offering  a free computer for signing a 2 year contract for dial-up internet.That ended my little enterprise abruptly.  Most midsize and large companies used to have what they called a"mini"computer to run their operations. It took up a huge air-conditioned room and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now days, companies just contract with "cloud"providers who run the operations in huge data centers for a monthly fee. The makers of mainframes and minis had to scramble to find new businesses to keep the doors open. Any technology company that can't constantly reinvent itself will either be bought-out or die. Currently, some of the biggest names in tech are trying to stay pertinent by transitioning from a manufacturer or software provider to service providers. Microsoft, IBM, Hewett Packard,Cisco, Xerox and many others are searching for new sources of revenue. The auto industry is also undergoing a huge change. Soon, the autonomous car will be commonplace. It will run on batteries and get recharged from household current. Successsful investors of the future will have to determine which companies will benefit from the new products and changing consumer behavior. I have no idea who the winners will be but I will be watching to see how the established companies compete with nimble upstarts who will try to unseat them. Instead of trying to predict the eventual dominate player in a new technology, I would rather invest in the component supplier who makes a "must have" part that is critical to the technology. At the current time these component makers for cell phones are out of favor due to slowing growth in smartphone sales which has investors spooked. I don't see any alternatives to smart phones at this time so I will be adding to my positions of MU, LAM, and possibly NVDA for AI exposure and autonomous technology.

If You Want It Done Right............

      Maybe I am just getting grouchy and particular in my old age, but sometimes when I get "help" out in the garden, I am never satisfied with the results. My fellow gardener, who is 15 years older than me, feels the same way when I help him. Everybody has their own ideas about the way things should be done. I feel the same way when it comes to my investments. Nowdays, people have choices about how they go about tending to their nest-egg. One option is to have a "guy" who is supposed to act in your best interest and make you money. The fact is that this guy will make money regardless of whether you do. If you don't have the knowledge to invest yourself, how do you know he is selecting appropriate investments for you? Another option is to buy all mutual funds. Most mutual fund families actually hire an outside firm as advisor to select the investments for the fund. So your actually hiring a company who hires a company who hires some people to manage your money. Another choice is to buy a passive investment which tracks an index like the S&P 500. This can be a mutual fund or an ETF which simply buys the stocks contained within the index. When the market goes up you might make money and when the market goes down you lose. Your only decision is whether you should be in stocks or not. Another mutual fund option is the "fund of funds" portfolio. This is where your advisor sells you a mutual fund that contains other mutual funds, usually within the same family of funds. I believe in diversification but this is simply dilution and usually a losing position. My last option is to just do it yourself. It takes a little conviction and some homework but the rewards can be worth it. Picking your own investments can be profitable in both up and down markets. Selecting undervalued stocks when the overall market is high can limit your risk and provide income when the averages are declining. Knowing when to lighten up on stocks and select alternatives is something passive investing doesn't do. Most mutual funds are required by charter to have a certain level of stocks in their portfolio. I own some mutual funds, ETF's, passive investments, and even have a "guy" or two to lean on but I like the control I have by owning stocks that I selected myself. Tending to my portfolio is a lot like gardening. If you plan your garden carefully, buy good seeds and stock, then keep it weeded, it should produce good yields. Likewise, buy good stocks, monitor their progress, weed-out the losers, and reap the rewards.

2018 Mid Year Review

     It's that time of year again for me to review the picks made in the 2018 Forecast. Even though I did mention some individual stocks, I now use ETF's and some sector mutual funds to indicate my favorite sectors. The first sector I recommended was the Financial sector and I used the XLF as my benchmark. This ETF is off about 2.25% so far this year. I still like this sector for all the reasons stated in my forecast but the fact is that overall loan demand is low at this time and the fundamentals of the business is in question. To compensate for the slow growth, big banks are planning to return record amounts of capital to investors through stock buy-backs and increased dividends. My second choice was in the energy sector. I  referred to two investments: VDE which is a Vanguard mutual fund and XLE which is an ETF. VDE is up about 7% this year and XLE is up 6%. As expected, energy has stabilized this year and I expect this to continue for the foreseeable future. Another oil related investment was the Alerian master limited partnership ETF symbol (AMLP). This investment has a yield of about 8% but has not appreciated this year so far due to some technical issues within the MLP space. My last recommendation was the XLK, which is the S&P ETF invested in Technology. This fund returned over 9% so far this year. Some analysts  believe that there is some trouble coming to the technology area for the short term. If a trade war breaks out- and it looks like it will, then the global supply chain for many technology companies will be interrupted.
     I am still comfortable with all my recommendations but I am getting a little nervous about the market as a whole. My reasoning is that we are in a historically long bull market and something is bound to end it soon. The old saying that bull markets don't die of old age is true-some catalyst will cause a reversal in stocks and a trade war may be it. There is also the possibility that the Fed will raise rates to a point that causes earnings to decline and investors to jump into fixed income investments like CD's or bonds. Some of my retirement funds have already been moved into the best yielding CD's that I could find through my brokerage account. These CD's are federally insured but don't yield a lot, however, if the market sells-off I will sleep better knowing that my retirement is still on track.

Passing The Torch

    Something profound happened on Friday night June 22 at about 10:30 pm. The person who initiated this blog passed away at age 93. She had suffered from dementia for about 10 years and God finally called her home. This was my mother, Ella Mae Sheets. She would have liked for me to be a good student in school, but I wasn't. She would have liked for me to become a professional like a doctor or a lawyer, but I didn't. But something happened about when I turned 20 years old that created a bond between us that lasted for the rest of our lives.We began a dialogue about investing that created a spark in me that still burns hot. Our first investments were in South African gold mining stocks. I took time out from my partying ways every week to corroborate with her on the progress of our investments and to discuss other stocks for further research. This dialogue continued for many decades. It was our common bond. I seldom bought or sold a stock without informing or conferring with her. She often consulted me about what she was buying or selling. Something amazing happened during this partnership-we were making money! Not always of course, but over time, our gains exceeded our losses. Our disagreements were mostly just challenges to force a defense of a stated position. Over time, our separate portfolios grew, not because we traded often, but because we let our profits grow. After Mom became unable to manage her accounts due to the dementia, I assumed the management of her portfolio. I was surprised to see that many of the stocks that I had mentioned to her were positions she had taken. She was actually listening to me all those years! Neither my father or mother made much money during their working lives, but because my mother took a keen interest in her personal finances, she was able to retire comfortably and live out her life with the best care possible. I owe much to this woman for instilling in me the notion of saving for retirement, investing wisely and controlling my expenses. I just hope that the torch passes to future generations.

The Next Big Thing

     Everybody wants to be invested in the next blockbuster stock. Once the future craze is identified, an investor must figure what company(s) will benefit the most from it. Based on what I've been reading in Barrons and other financial publications, I have decided that artificial intelligence (AI) will be huge in the years to come. AI can be used for almost any application where large amounts of data must be analyzed and conclusions reached for efficiencies and problem solving. One easy example laid-out in Barrons uses two similar large retail banks- Bank (X) and Bank (Y).  They both notice that their delinquencies and charge-offs due to bad loans are increasing at an alarming rate. Bank X contracts with an outside firm who uses AI to analyze their data. Bank Y uses "In house analysis" and no AI. The Board of Directors at Bank Y decides to lower the credit limit by 50% for all credit card holders to control the bad debt losses. This also costs them millions in interest payments and lost accounts. However, Bank X has discovered through their analysis that most of the charged-off debts came from customers who had their direct deposits halted within the past 3 months. Yup, the direct deposits were paychecks and those customers had lost their jobs recently and were living on credit that they couldn't pay-off. Therefore, the Board of Directors of Bank X just had to get a list of the accounts with a stop on the direct deposit and act on only them. This is the power of AI. The way I see it , in the future, it's a must have for all successful companies. Not only that, but also consider autonomous cars and the massive amount of data that will use. The Internet of Things (IOT) is another huge developing technology where all new appliances will be wired to the Internet for monitoring and auto diagnosis.
     There are several stocks which are trading near their all-time highs because they enable these new technologies to function. I have owned several of them for a while and was tempted to sell this morning for some quick profits. However, I decided that the potential of these stocks far exceeds their current price, so I still hold them. There is no guarantee that these companies will be the ultimate winners in the technology space because there is always the potential for an upstart to unseat them with a better product. At the current time I just have to go with what I know. My picks include Micron Technology (MU), Xilinx (XLNX), Lam Reasearch (LRCX), and Nvidia (NVDA). As always I like to buy on dips, especially with high valuation stocks like NVDA but when the next correction comes, I'll be looking to add to my AI portfolio.

The Rollover

     At almost 66 years old, I decided to perform a rollover of my 401k retirement savings into an IRA at my discount brokerage account. According to the plan rules set-up by my former employer for the 401k, I would have to do this by age 69 1/2 anyway. My reasons for doing this were many, I didn't like the limited choices offered by the old plan, the customer service was sketchy, the website was clunky, and I wanted to derisk my portfolio by putting a substantial amount into federally insured CD's. I will still hold some stocks, mutual funds and ETF's in my rollover account but having guaranteed income without any loss of principle is attractive to me at my age. When it comes to customer service, my broker, TD Ameritrade, really impresses me. They answer the phone 24/7 and are knowledgeable and helpful. Sometimes in life, things happen during non-business hours that need attention immediately so it's good to know they have my back. Most employers contract-out the administration of their retirement plans to the lowest cost contractor. Your calls for assistance are often directed to third world countries. The people who answer the phone are trained to speak English and read the plan rules from a manual. They often have several companies to service thus several manuals to refer to. This can be confusing to them when trying to read and understand all the complex rules regarding rollovers and nuances of each particular plan. I also have trouble understanding some of these folks because I have poor hearing and they have heavy accents. What I have learned is that they can often give wrong advice which can cause major problems when trying to perform a rollover according to IRS rules. The last thing I need is a very large tax liability because someone in Malaysia or India gave me a bum steer. Over the years, I have challenged their instructions when what they were telling me really just didn't make sense or differed from what I read in the same manual they have. My advice is to question them if something just doesn't seem right. Plan participants of any age can elect to rollover into an IRA. My only warning is to check the rollover account for fees which can eat into your returns.  Anyone who is not happy with their current plan should consider the rollover option. The receiving firm should be able to walk you through the steps to complete the transaction.