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What European Quantitative Easing Means? Plus A Portfolio Change

The European Central Bank (ECB) announced today they are launching a quantitative easing (“QE”) program beginning March 2015. The ECB will coordinate with its member countries’ central banks to purchase 60 billion euros of bonds per month until at least September 2016. As I discussed in Episode 29, quantitative easing is a financial placebo because its impact is less about its size and more about the stories individuals believe about it. … [Read more...]

A New Portfolio Experiment – Country Rotation

One of my investment goals in 2015 is to further increase my level of diversification. As part of that initiative, today I increased my exposure to emerging markets equity through a number of country specific exchanged traded funds. This is part of a new portfolio experiment I am undertaking. … [Read more...]

Investment Conditions – January 2015

This is the January 2015 investment conditions update and market exposure recommendation. Favorable investment conditions can be thought of as favorable weather. Just as you don’t launch a sail boat when heavy storms are likely, there are favorable investing conditions when the sun is shining and there is a tailwind that raises the likelihood of positive portfolio returns. Identifying favorable conditions is much easier than predicting specific events. It is the difference between … [Read more...]

Stock Exposure Adjustment In My Portfolio

Earlier this month I described the portfolio changes I made in October to take advantage of positive seasonality and the fact that U.S. stocks had hit an extreme and reversed. If the Hub had been live at the time I made the trades I would have detailed them then. Today, I adjusted my equity exposure as follows: … [Read more...]

Stock Performance Following Large Drops In Oil Prices

The price of oil fell through $60 a barrel last week and has now fallen over 40% since July. This essay is a follow up to the audio lesson on oil I released last week. This drop in the oil price is an excellent example of how markets are “clumpy” in that large moves are often compressed in to short periods of time. They cluster. This oil price decline is a classic extreme event as falling prices, prompt more selling and more falling prices. There is definitely an element of panic as the … [Read more...]

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