Asset Allocation

There is an underlying belief by many that there is a balancing ratio between silver and gold that can, over the long-term, help in evaluating current market prices. Swings and trends in this ratio are one of the many indicators gold buyers and investors use to evaluate their market positions and the right time to buy or to sell.

There is so much that we could learn from all these three men but, sadly, just like we saw in 2008, most Americans are ignoring the warnings. The mainstream media has conditioned the public to trust them, and right now the mainstream media is insisting that everything is going to be just fine, so will everything be just fine as the months roll along? We will just have to wait and see.

I have come up with 10 rather intriguing-looking small companies that are also attractive from a valuation perspective. The portfolio review lists them by ticker, name, sector, debt to capital, P/E ratio, price to cash flow, dividend yield, market cap, near-term estimated earnings per share growth and longer-term trend line estimated EPS growth.

In December I listed my top 5 overall silver stocks to buy in 2016 and, since almost 4 months have passed since that article was published, here's an update on how each of the picks have performed (up 94.55% on average in the 1st quarter compared to "only" 51.2% performance for the SIL).

An attractive aspect of owning dividend paying stocks, specifically, dividend growth equities, is the fact they tend to hold up better in down market environments. The favorable result from this characteristic is it takes a smaller upside return to make up the losses incurred in a market decline. Here are the details.

Dividends are a key part of most investors’ financial strategy. However, not all dividends are created equal, and chasing yield can often end in tears. To help investors select the best income stocks, Société Générale publishes a monthly income screen, highlighting the best dividend stocks in developed markets based on a number of quality criteria. The bank also publishes a high dividend risk screen, which picks out those companies that are most likely to cut their dividends in the near future. Hopefully, they will help you improve your investing process to some degree.

If there’s been a worse place to be as an investor over the past few years than gold & silver stocks then I haven’t found it. Over the past three years a diversified basket of these metals and mining companies is down over 65%. In that same time the S&P 500 is up nearly 75%, an enormous difference in performance. Here's a look at the historical numbers to get a better sense of how they tend to act.

Warren Buffett likes to counsel individual investors to buy-and-hold (specifically, buy an equity index fund and hold it forever). This is a perfect example of “do as I say, not as I do,” as Buffett has successfully timed the market for decades and, [interestingly,] Buffett is now carrying his largest cash position ever in stark contrast to individual investors who now hold their smallest cash positions since the height of the internet bubble. Clearly, he’s timing once again and I’m sure a few of you are wondering just how he manages to do this so successfully. [Let me explain.]

Most investors don't know anything more about diversification than you "shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket" [but] spending some time trying to understand the ways you might be shooting yourself in the foot could seriously enhance your portfolio returns and stop catastrophic risk. [There are some advantages to diversification if you REALLY know what you are doing but the shortcomings can go a long way towards killing your portfolio returns. In this article we identify what they are and how best to avoid them.] Words: 1055

Those that read this site regularly know my pessimism regarding the future. People frequently ask: “What do I do to protect myself and my family?” or “What should I invest in?” While this discussion will not provide you with specific answers, it should provide a framework that may be useful.