Asset Allocation

The financial markets endgame is 'binary' with a likely outcome of 'one of two extremes'. This is an extremely important thing for everyone to think about. Below is more of what Mohamed El-Erian believes investors ought to be considering in these prevailing uncertain times and my comments/expansion on those views.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is worried that municipal bankruptcies, combined with an expected spike in interest rates, means that the muni bond market could face "Armageddon" with devastating consequences for the individual investors (74% of the total) who hold the paper of which many are retirees. Words: 490

Billionaires Warren Buffett, John Paulson, and George Soros are selling consumer-oriented stocks. What do they know that you and I don’t?

Bitcoin is the first peer-to-peer (P2P) digital currency and payment system to gain significant interest. This month its marketcap surpassed $1 billion. [Below is a description of what Bitcoin is, and isn't, and why it has caught on to the extent it has.]

Use a portion of your portfolio in the form of credit spreads to protect and drive income over the next nine months. It's an extremely simple strategy to learn and arguably the most powerful strategy in the professional options traders' tool belt

In volatile markets you must be able to go to cash when markets become dangerous. That is exactly what the momentum selection model does well. It protects your capital on the downside and enables it to grow on the upside! If you insist on staying in the stock market at all times, even perfect foresight cannot protect you. The ability and willingness to periodically run away beats the macho strategy of holding on.

Assume that we are at a point corresponding to the beginning of 2007. How would our investing/trading techniques weather the same conditions represented by this most recent market adjustment? Would we be able to mitigate the losses (or even avoid them)? A traditional buy & hold, diversified investing strategy will be evaluated here.

My answer to the issue of staying in or getting out of markets is to stay in. This answer is independent of whether a correction is imminent or a few years down the road because we cannot possibly know that information....There will be a time to completely flee markets. It is just not now or at least I don’t believe so.

With the stock market forging ahead it is imperative that those who manage other peoples money (and/or their own) become extremely well read - beyond their normal corporate reports, opinions and analyses - on the reality of what is evolving in the marketplace from as many different perspectives as possible. Because it would take days to gather such information we have gathered together a number of such articles on the subject with introductory paragraphs and hyperlinks to each. They are well worth your time to read.

I am not married to my ideas and neither should you be. While I have covered the long-term bullish argument in the past, I believe there are some indications that gold is richly valued in the interim. Caution is warranted.