Monthly Archives: April 2015

Is Jim Cramer’s diversification advice insane?

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Diversified Portfolio DMMDear Mr. Market:

Have you ever heard of a guy named Jim Cramer? If you’re a seasoned investor you certainly know of the television personality, best-selling author, and host of CNBC’s Mad Money show. If you’re a novice investor you may have heard of him as well due to his popularity but we would caution you to stay away. Why?

This article is not a hit piece on Jim Cramer. He is a wildly successful entertainer who adds color and talking points on the stock market but make no mistake about it…he is not your financial advisor. As a matter of fact he advises nobody professionally but by virtue of his massive media platform he commands a lot of attention, which gets construed as diligent financial advice or valid recommendations. Continue reading →

There’s no YOU in UIT (Unit Investment Trust)

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UIT CartoonDear Mr. Market:

Have you ever bought a product or service and afterwards felt like you had been taken to the cleaners? Consumers look for superior products and they also want a great deal. Imagine buying a top of the line computer only to find out that you need to buy another one every year or two and to top of it off you have to pay a commission to the salesperson each time…who would possibly want that scenario?!

It might be a very nice computer but at what point do you question your purchase and stop the sales/commission cycle? As we’ve discussed in several of our letters to Mr. Market the financial services industry is littered with products and services that do little for the individual investor but benefit companies and commission driven brokers by lining their pockets. We’ve covered annuities, life insurance products and loaded mutual funds, but today we will look at a product that is making a come back after declining in popularity over the last few years….Unit Investment Trusts or UITs.

The name itself sounds a bit intimidating but the product itself is fairly simple and easy to understand. Essentially a UIT is a fixed unmanaged portfolio with a set maturity in the future (usually one to two years). They are comprised of equities, bonds or a combination of the two with a focus on broad market, specific strategies or sometimes sector specific. At first glance they appear very similar to a mutual fund or ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) but when you pull back the covers the differences are glaring.  Continue reading →

MPG Core Tactical 60/40: March 2015 Performance Update

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 MW-BB798_sm6040_20130422180557_MDDear Mr. Market:

You don’t have to be a professional money manager to be aware that the swift decline in oil prices has been one of the most impactful financial headlines in years. As a matter of fact if you didn’t own a computer, read a newspaper, or have basic access to media, you would still know that oil has dropped like a rock. All you had to do was go to the gas station and see that it costs far less to fill up your tank today than it did last year.

What you may not have noticed, however, is the huge appreciation in the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar index compares the dollar with a basket of other currencies and it spiked up 50% in the first couple weeks of March. It has already risen almost 8% year to date and this has impacted the stock market in ways that many are unprepared for. With any situation like this there are silver linings and opportunities that we’ll discuss later in this article.

First let’s review where we’re currently at and what we did last month:

Here’s the current summary of the MPG Core Tactical 60/40 portfolio mix, which is updated as of this writing (April 1, 2015).

Click here to compare our portfolio against the benchmark

What adjustments did we make?

The following moves were made during the month of March:

3/13/15:  Bought 200 more shares of VO (Vanguard Mid Cap Index) @ $126.19 ~$2 worth

3/25/15:  Bought 75,000 final shares of MONIF (Monitise) @ $0.191 ~$14k worth Continue reading →