Author: Innovative Income Investor

Yesterday I trimmed a few of the gains in our portfolios—maybe adding around 1-2% to our cash position yesterday.

I have written about having little to no cash for the last month or two–virtually everything was invested. A fully invested position was the correct move and it yielded lots of gains, but now I am targeting a cash position of 10% or so–with money market funds paying a decent amount the ‘pain’ of too much cash will not be nearly as bad as it was previously when the yield was zero.

Equity markets are looking red this morning, although probably just a limited number of issues contributing to the losses–like 3M which missed on revenue and income.

Interest rates are off a couple basis points this morning at 3.5%. We have the PMI manufacturing and services index release at 8:45 a.m. (central)–these shouldn’t move the market (but who knows for sure).

Lots of earnings coming out including the community and regional bankers. Bank OZK released late last week–the report is here. Customers Bancorp (CUBI) will release tomorrow.

An hour ago we got a softer than expected reading on the leading economic indicators from The Conference Board. The reading came in at a -1% for December versus expectations of -.7%. So the indicators are down 4.2% over the course of the last month. On the other hand ‘coincident’ indicators rose a tiny amount and they are up 1.4% over the last 6 months.

The 10 year treasury was climbing into the 3.54% area, but has now backed off to 3.50% with the soft data.

I am once again showing a small amount (+.1-.2%) of green in accounts and am more than satisfied with any capital gains at this point in time–dividends and interest will hit in about a week which will give a modest boost to accounts–January is not a large payment month.

There is no more economic news today and I don’t see that there are any Fed ‘talking heads’ out there speaking maybe it will be quiet from here on out (who really knows).