Tag Archives: stocks

Bulls, Bears, and Ballots: Election Years & the Stock Market

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Dear Mr. Market:

If you’re watching an NBA basketball game and you have one player to take a final shot to win the game, who do you choose? Like him or not the guy who has scored the second most points in the history of basketball is LeBron James and he has made 50.5% of all shots he’s ever taken. Let’s switch sports to much worse odds, like baseball, where the average hitter is around .250 for a batting average. Even the best the game has ever seen was the great Ty Cobb who hit .366 for his career. Speaking of winning or losing, the mecca of odds making is in Las Vegas of course, and if you’re ever interested in losing money, just know that on average you can come out with a winning blackjack hand only 42.4% of the time.

New year, fresh canvas, but pretty much the same problems….So what are the odds of the market going up, down, or sideways in 2024?

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Permanent Portfolio Review

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Dear Mr. Market:

Simple allocation ?

In a year where the stock market has provided zero safe places to hide…you may have changed, the markets certainly have, but one thing has not; the Permanent Portfolio.

We’ve reviewed the Permanent Portfolio before but believe it’s time to check in and provide an update on how it’s doing relative to the broad markets now as well as chime in on whether the strategy still has merit going forward. For some quick background, our first original review was written in June of 2013 (click here to see that). Most recently we revisited the topic with an update in November of 2020 (click here) as we climbed out of one of the wildest years in world history amidst a global pandemic.

If you didn’t hit the embedded article links above, the Permanent Portfolio is pretty simple at face value. The Permanent Portfolio is a seemingly basic portfolio allocation strategy created by investment advisor Harry Browne in the 1980’s and outlined in his book Fail-Safe Investing back in 2001. Here’s the secret (simple) sauce and how each asset class should do during repeatable economic cycles:

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Should You Buy Target (TGT) Stock?

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Target InvestigationDear Mr. Market:

With the holiday season now in the rear view mirror U.S. consumers are being reminded of the world we live in.  In the middle of the holiday shopping season Target made an announcement that had an impact on millions of individuals.  On December 19th Target announced that 40 million credit and debit cards had been jeopardized by a cyber attack.  Since then the number of cards has grown to 70 million, it has been reported that the number could grow to as many as 110 million!  Just last week Neiman Marcus released news that it is dealing with a similar situation and other retailers are likely to be in the same boat in the coming weeks.

On Friday (January 10th) Target announced that the security issue had a negative impact on their holiday shopping results.  Stores saw sales decline up to 5% (depending on location) when compared to the previous years results.  When 4th quarter earnings are announced on February 26, 2014, the additional expenses the company has incurred due to the hacking incident will certainly have an impact.  CEO Greg Steinhafel announced that 4th quarter EPS (earnings per share) were lowered to $1.20 – $1.30 from the previous guidance of $1.50 – $1.60.  Continue reading →