Category Archives: Investment strategies

MPG Core Tactical 60/40: July 2014 Performance Update

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MW-BB798_sm6040_20130422180557_MDDear Mr. Market:

Have you ever woken up long before your alarm clock was set to go off? Put yourself in that state of mind for a minute. You see the alarm clock, take a pleasant mental check that you still have some time to sleep and you pleasantly roll over and shut your eyes; it’s almost like you just were rewarded free time which is the one thing we can never get back!

CLANK, BANG, SCREECH, HONK!?!?! What on earth?? Something that is NOT your alarm clock rattles you awake and spoils this momentary feeling of pure relaxation.

That’s basically what Mr. Market did to everyone in July. The last day of July brought people a wicked reminder of what the market can do if you let it put you to sleep. We haven’t seen a sharp drop like this in a few years and it certainly got your attention, didn’t it?

We actually saw a rather sharp selloff in some of the technology and momentum stocks in April of this year but this time it is broad based and appears to be signaling something more. Before we talk further about the markets and how they may have finally awoken some of you, let’s refresh our often short-term memories on why we run this monthly series of articles.

Click here to revisit the first edition of the MPG Core Tactical 60/40 Portfolio.

Here’s the current summary of the MPG Core Tactical 60/40 portfolio mix, which is updated as of this writing (August 4, 2014).

Click here to compare our portfolio against the benchmark.

What adjustments did we make?

One thing we try to avoid when it comes to managing money is to “pat yourself on the back without breaking your arm”. We did very little this month aside from clearly communicate that we thought not only was the stock market ready to correct but we also laid out what we planned to do about it. Read and click here to see exactly what we said. The moves we made in advance of the worst down day of the year were as follows: Continue reading →

Here comes the stock market correction…What should you do?

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Unknown-61Dear Mr. Market:

You’ve been messing and toying with the brightest minds since 1792, when the New York Stock Exchange was created under a buttonwood tree on Wall Street. Your latest bull market run has as many investors as puzzled as it does nervous. The longer we go on without a stock market correction the potentially worse it will be when it eventually hits. At this point, it’s clearly not a matter of “if” but “when” it is coming. Continue reading →

Independent Review of the Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX)

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fidelity logoDear Mr. Market:

You need to hear about another mutual fund like you need a new hole in your head. That being said, however, how about we talk about one that’s been around for a long time? They must be doing something well….right?

We’ve certainly not held back with our opinion in the past when it comes to mutual funds. While they certainly can warrant a spot in many portfolios, they need to be reviewed and compared carefully to their peers and other investment options. Today we are going to take an in-depth look at a fund we see in many portfolios but very few individuals actually understand what it is. The Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX) is one of the largest actively managed equity mutual funds there is with assets just under $110 billion! Continue reading →

3 Common Diversification Mistakes

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Dear Mr. Market:Diversification 2

Whether you handle your portfolio or hire a professional to manage it, there is no way you have not heard of the importance of diversifying your investments. The reality is, however, most investors fall prey to one of three major diversification mistakes; which of the three is your issue?

First and foremost, let’s briefly review what diversification is:

Investopedia defines Diversification as: ‘A risk management technique that mixes a wide variety of investments within a portfolio. The rationale behind this technique contends that a portfolio of different kinds of investments will, on average, yield higher returns and pose a lower risk than any individual investment found within the portfolio.’

At first glance this makes sense and doesn’t appear to be complex, right? We find that investors typically appear to be in one of three different camps when it comes to diversification:

  1. Under Diversification
  2. Improper Diversification
  3. Over Diversification

Let’s take a moment to look at each and how investors can get their portfolios back on track. Continue reading →

MPG Core Tactical 60/40: May 2014 Performance Update

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MW-BB798_sm6040_20130422180557_MDDear Mr. Market:

Where have you been? Whenever you get quiet like this it makes us even a bit more nervous.

Hopefully you didn’t succumb to the alluring sounds coming from those in the “bear camp” last month. If you were tempted to “sell in May and go away” it still just wasn’t meant to be. As cute and trendy as that old investment adage is, we must remind you that it doesn’t necessarily have a specific date in mind. Proponents of this theme merely imply that the summer months are the ones to avoid and if there ever was a month of May to make this move…it was now. Or was it?

Now that the “sell in May” adage looks flat out stupid, you can perhaps resort to a “June Swoon” for the eye candy headline of the day. After all, June is the 10th worst calendar month of the year. Since 1950 it’s basically been a flat month but more recent history points to June losing an average of -1.33% over the past 10 years.

It’s not so much the market or serious investors that love catchy phrases but it’s those that feed you the news who are the perpetrators. If this article were being written in November we would have many of the same concerns as we do now. Many of the catch phrases will be stale by then but in the interim…much like a broken clock tells time correctly twice a day…eventually the bears will be right. Contrarian investors will point to this immediate period as the market climbing the proverbial “wall of worry”… or is it now a “slope of hope”?

Here’s the current summary of the MPG Core Tactical 60/40 portfolio mix, which is updated as of this writing (June 9, 2014).

Click here to compare the MPG Core Tactical Portfolio against the 60/40 benchmark.

What adjustments did we make? Continue reading →

MPG Core Tactical 60/40: April 2014 Performance Update

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MW-BB798_sm6040_20130422180557_MDDear Mr. Market:

Unless you’ve never picked up a financial magazine or read the business section of any newspaper, you have undoubtedly heard of the old investment adage “Sell in May and go away”. Many financial “experts” and journalists do their best to paint the summer months as those that are primed to underperform. Does history always repeat itself in exactly the same way? Nope. It’s not hard to find investors who sold last spring (or even the one prior) in anticipation of a nasty summer and they are still in cash or underweight equities. If you’re in that boat and don’t trust the stock market, you may sleep better at night for now but in the interim you’ve lost opportunity cost and missed another bull market.

The flip side to this is that bearish investors will eventually be right! The S&P 500 has not had a correction of -10% or more since October 3, 2011. Like many investors out there we firmly believe a correction of -10% to -20% is coming this year but we don’t think it will be the start of a bear market. The challenge behind all of this, however, is that the longer we go without a healthy correction the deeper and more severe the inevitable sell-off will be. Continue reading →

What’s the Asset Allocation of your Investing Freeway?

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Dear Mr. Market:

Nobody likes traffic but it’s without question a part of our daily lives. Being stuck behind a long line of cars and seeing nothing but red taillights is even more aggravating when you are short on time and need to be somewhere soon. Many of us try to do whatever we can to avoid traffic; whether it be leaving earlier, taking side streets, carpooling, or relying on tools like GPS apps that show us the best routes to take. What does this have to do with investing? Everything…

If you haven’t yet learned or heard why the freeway is perhaps the most important analogy for the success of your portfolio…you need to commit this article to memory. Your local freeway can teach you why 90% of your portfolio’s performance is dependent on what lanes you choose to drive in and only 10% on how fast your car is.

Take for example, Interstate 405 in Los Angeles…which happens to be the busiest stretch of highway there is in the nation. Let’s say you need to get from Long Beach to LA in what normally takes about 30 minutes. You hop in your car and hit the fast lane and seem to be making great time averaging 65 mph. No sooner than about 10 minutes into your drive your lane comes to a screeching halt. After about almost a mile of grinding away at five mph you decide to switch into the lane to your right which is now flowing much faster. Almost within seconds of doing this, the lane you were just in passes you by! Your 30 minute trip to LA will now take you at least an hour and possibly more at this pace.

This simple but nightmarish traffic scenario happens daily to over 400,000 drivers along the 405 but it also absolutely ruins millions of portfolio every year! Pretend each lane of the freeway represents an asset class. (ex: Large Caps, Small Caps, International, and Bonds) On any given year one “lane” (or asset class) will lead the markets but the likelihood of it doing so the next is rare and if you look at historical returns there is no discernible pattern. CLICK HERE to review how asset classes have performed each year from 1994 to 2013:

One of the better examples of this is Emerging Markets in the early 2000’s.

The BRIC’s (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) were all the rage from 2003 until 2007. Hardly any investors had the courage to step in until late 2007 because they were still licking their wounds from the “dot com” crash. Many people hid in cash or gravitated to Bonds which turned in a +10.26% year in 2002.

Over the next four years Bonds Continue reading →

High Frequency Trading – How does it impact you?

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HTF robotsDear Mr. Market:

The markets are constantly moving from one headline to the next – some of them having a profound impact on the markets. Last Sunday night “60 Minutes” aired a topic that has been lurking in the shadows for years, suddenly it jumped up and grabbed headlines raising concerns and paranoia with investors. High Frequency Trading (HFT) has dominated headlines over the last week prompting a federal investigation and hours of debate.

Michael Lewis, author of “Flash Boys”, has been on a publicity tour claiming the U.S. Stock Market is ‘rigged’. Is the average investor at a disadvantage, on the outside looking in at the security exchanges? This week we encourage you to view a letter being sent to our clients and friends of the firm (High Frequency Trading letter) Continue reading →

MPG Core Tactical 60 /40: March 2014 Performance Update

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MW-BB798_sm6040_20130422180557_MDDear Mr. Market:

March has turned in another month of stubborn market defiance as the investment world is waiting for a correction yet it never seems to come or fully develop! It’s without question that many of the warning signs continue to lurk below the surface but the S&P 500 has still managed to tack on about another +1%. Year to date we’re just about 1% of where we started 2014 but it sure feels uncomfortable for many.

If this is your first time reading about our MPG Core Tactical Portfolio please refer back to our first post. (click here) In short you will see what adjustments we make throughout the year on a $1 million dollar portfolio and how that performs relative to a portfolio that is rebalanced once per month with an allocation of 60% Stocks and 40% Bonds. Continue reading →

Update: March Madness: Final Four Investing Bracket 2014

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March MadnessThe 2014 NCAA Basketball Tournament certainly had an eventful weekend!  52 games have been played across the country with 5 of them going into overtime. The $1 Billion that Warren Buffett offered to anyone that had a perfect bracket is now a distant memory. Every year there are plenty of surprises and this year has been no different:

  • 3 of the 4 teams that were seeded as #12 in their brackets posted wins over teams seeded #5! The one team that lost was beaten by only 3 points in overtime!
  • #1 seed and ‘media darling’ Wichita State lost to #8 Kentucky in the 2nd round.
  • The 2 longest winning streaks in the country have both come to an abrupt end – Wichita State with 35 and S.F. Austin with 29.

 Here are some other mind boggling numbers to take into consideration with the NCAA Tournament:

  • The odds of winning Buffet’s $1 Billion prize was 1 in 4,294,967,296!
  • It is estimated that Vegas takes in over $100 Million from bets on the NCAA Tournament – experts think this represents only 4% of all the money wagered on games!
  • The NCAA tournament costs businesses $1.7 Billion in lost productivity during the month of March.

Continue reading →