It only takes a singular giant sized stock to torpedo any potential stock rally–and as everyone knows UnitedHealth is the culprit today. But we also have economic news that is pointing a bit toward a softening economy. Global purchasing managers index is softening (as it has been for a year or so) further–but this includes the services component which had been holding up–til now.
On top of this we had weakening existing home sales and consumer sentiment. On top of this inflation expectations pushed a bit higher—as someone mentioned in comments yesterday–stagflation?
The 10 year treasury continues to drift lower–now off by 4 basis points at 4.46%. I am going to watch today–I have cash available to buy, but I am feeling lazy so will make it a low stress Friday and not buy anything at all.
Despite SPY being down 1.6% this week, and the dow almost -2.9% & – 3.6% since Jan 31– I was pleasantly surprise that my accts have grown nicely this week–folks fleeing equities?
Gary, Likewise. 3 of my 4 accts closed at all time highs yesterday. The pig pile 200 (now the pig pile 150) is designed for market strife. But I bet similar story for many III’ers. It’s been a decent time for income despite all the rate angst . Well, at least for now!!
Pig, our combined accounts at Fidelity are down as of Friday $14,000.00 from their all time highs. My Schwab account is at an all time high. Already know Fido will be lower next week with my wife’s withdrawal and end of month income isn’t enough to cover as Feb is a shortened month and less issues that pay end of month. I haven’t looked lately at the dividend channel or quantum to find more Feb. payer’s that are safe, but March will make up for it.
Holdings are about the same as I am hoping to spread the risk out and keep the income. Although I sold one holding and SBBA is going away in a couple weeks. I have added to holdings I already have if the price was right.
My wife’s account is at 25% cash but almost all is backing GTC orders so I will need to cancel or reduce some to cover her end of month withdrawal.
The P&P 150 has a nice ring to it!
My accounts are all at record highs as well even though my wife quit her job thanks to how well we did investing last year. I made more than what she was going to make between now and retirement so we “spent” it on getting her a better quality of life sooner.
Hard to reinvest now though when something gets called. I am having to double down on some investments more than I usually do.
mine too!
For equity much depends on your time horizon. If 5+ years then regular investing fine. Though shun any significant market timing do like to add bit more when in midst of declines. So after close today will have buys in for the S&P 500 index and total stock market index via mutual funds so it will buy at the end of a possibly depressing Monday. Did recently something similar last 12th as posted then under the thread, “Interest Rates Shoot Higher on Hot CPI”. Viewed it as a nice discount day for my fixed purchases which were made during that day. Not to say equities will quickly rebound (heck can even have a down year for that matter) but it may bounce with simply a different news story and over time (years) will almost most definitely go higher.
Have nice weekend.
WMT and JPM continuing lower today. Today is expiry. I don’t think UNH is all of the story with the stock indexes.
Hmm. My first post with just a link went into the spam folder. Let me try again.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/stocks-puke-after-china-reports-new-coronavirus-pandemic-potential-discovered
FC,
Didn’t someone claim zerohedge is written by a Russian agent?
Ah, here. No idea if it’s true, but as long as my neighbor still thinks the NJ drones are from an Iranian ship off the East coast of the US and were blackmailing us with poison spores of some kind, I might as well buy into a good conspiracy.
https://newrepublic.com/article/156788/zero-hedge-russian-trojan-horse
BTW I’m in a guard gated neighborhood but this person has Rolladen shutters on the downstairs and UPSTAIRS windows , not for storms, but because of worry about the breakdown of social order.
Lt, my father-in-law looked up his family in Germany in the 70’s his father came to Wisconsin in the 1890’s or 1910’s and a brother came over also. So mostly were only 1 generation separated from himself. Started a family reunion that they rotated every 4 yrs.
After I married I went on these reunions and stayed at people’s homes.
Being in the building business you notice the way homes are built. Everyone over there has security shutters built into the house. The front door is a swing out. Hard to kick in a door like you see in the cop movies here. Just so you know your neighbor is not paranoid.
“Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear . . .”
— For What It’s Worth, Stephen Stills, 1967
I’ll have to find the article from 10-12 years ago, but someone proved that some of Zerohedge’s stories were copied word for word from something written by the GRU or internet research agency (Aka Prigozhin’s troll farm) , and they paid the American who runs Zerohedge until the sanctions cut that off in 2022.
so it wasn’t entirely funded by Russian interests, it was definitely doing their bidding for cash.
ZH was started by people from an Eastern European country not Russia I forget which one, They’re not the current owners nor did it look like an anti-american project, that was claimed by those who wanted to censor some of the articles they linked to..
I remember “Peter Lynch” at Fidelity way back when and consumer sentiment was a very big indicator of the economy back then for him. I wonder how significant it is today as without that animal instinct to buy, buy, buy bad things happen to even the most robust economy….Time will tell!
One of his indicators was….how full parking lots are at shopping centers