Hello, Clients and Friends.

It’s time for another blog-post/newsletter.  And conditions are ripe for one, aren’t they?

Actually, before you continue reading this one, could you read the previous two newsletters just below?  In them we discuss at length what is going on now, but just at two slightly earlier stages.   We don’t want to make this article simply a repeat of the last two.  But we’ll refer now to just a couple of the points we made then.

First, one of the causes of the downturn we are experiencing is the raising of the short-term interest rate by the Federal Reserve Bank.  What forced the bank to raise the Fed Funds Rate after waiting six years to do so?  Our economy was so healthy that the rate had to be raised to prevent inflation.  Have you caught the irony?  We’re having a panic-driven stock market downturn because the economy is so healthy. We’ll wait here for a moment for you to stop laughing.

We are now officially in a “correction,” a stock market downturn exceeding 10%, but not down beyond 20% (which would be a “bear market”).  The stock market (as measured by the S&P 500) is down point-to-point 11.76% since its last peak in May, 2015, including being down over 8% to start 2016.  Since 1950, the S&P 500 has had 33 “corrections” of 10% or more, or about once every two years. Additionally, 10 of the last 56 years have seen “bear market” downturns in the stock market, at some point in the year, greater than 20%.

There is usually one of two reasons for a bear market downturn.  One is an unhealthy economy, leading to a recession.  The other is a level of corruption so widespread that it affects the entire economy.  The downturn in 2008 was caused by corruption:  Wall Street packaging fraudulent sub-prime mortgages into bonds that were historically supposed to be safe and boring.  The rating agencies were in collusion and gave these bonds high rankings for safety.  Because these bonds were highly rated they were a staple of pensions and corporate and banking reserves.  When the bonds collapsed our economy fell into a recession, and the stock market fell 54% to its bottom day, only to recover substantially when the economy recovered.

The other reason for a really deep downturn is a recession, driven by economic causes.  While there is plenty of corruption in Wall Street, there does not seem to be any single corrupt strategy that can collapse all at once and draw us down with it.  And, ironically, the U.S. has what is perhaps the most healthy and robust economy in the world today.  Unemployment is historically low with record numbers of people working, corporate profits are historically high.  Now you know and we know that those jobs are below the quality of the jobs available in the 50s and 60s.  We also know that corporate profits are high because those corporations have gathered so much power they can control governments, squash unions and underpay workers.  The stock market is not falling because corporations are in trouble.

So, why is the stock market falling?  Largely because investors are in a panic, mostly because of low oil prices and an economic slowdown in China, and because panic sells magazines.  You can’t open the financial section of a newspaper without seeing a headline about the catastrophic fall of the stock market of as much as one-and-one-half or two percent!  In just one day!!!  This time it’s our turn to laugh. In 1987 the stock market fell 28% in one day!  This happened in a year in which the stock market fell 33% from August to the end of October.  And this all in a calendar year in which the stock market actually rose five percent from January 1^st to the end of December.

Now, we are not able to guarantee that this stock market panic might not turn into a self-fulfilling mechanism, finally causing a recession rather than being caused by one.  That could happen.  But our advice to you has consistently been to adopt with us an allocation that would combine stocks for long-term growth and bonds and cash for short-and-mid-term needs.  This strategy has helped you weather the past downturns we have experienced, and we don’t have any investors who ended 2015 with a portfolio value below where they were at the peak of the market in 2007.

If anybody had ever been able to time the market, that person would be world famous today.  Instead, the most famous portfolio managers have all been investors (like Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett) who tried to buy good investments, sell the ones that turned out to be dogs (no offense to our canine friends) and generally stayed invested.  Anybody can get out of the market at any time.  Some will get out at the right time, some at the wrong time.  Turns out that the really difficult trick is when to get back in.  One of the most famous market timers in recent years got his investors out ahead of a crash, then got them back in as the market ran back up, just before losing them 40% in a subsequent downturn (note: he is no longer a market timer).

In 1997 the U.S. stock markets fell more than 20% because of an Asian bond market collapse.  The markets corrected to a new high, then collapsed the next year more than 20% one more time because of a Russian bond market collapse.  All of this happened during the overall market rise from 1995-2000, one of the best market upturns in history.  That market rocket was ended by the bursting of the high-tech bubble.  At the peak of that bubble the most commonly used U.S. stock market index, the S&P 500, was being driven upward by just two stocks, Microsoft and Intel, while the rest of the 498 stocks in the index were all falling.  We don’t see anything like that going on right now.  We don’t think that now is any time to panic.

What do we think is going to happen?  This downturn is feeling so far like a typical emotionally driven correction and we don’t expect that it will become a bear market.  Stocks occasionally go on sale because people panic and sell them at just about any price they can get in their rush to get out of the market, and we are most likely experiencing one of those periods now.  Your allocation was established to handle this according to your needs and goals.

Further, remember that every one of the past downturns eventually ended with an even greater upturn and markets achieving new record highs.  If we now experience a bounce-back recovery, you are allocated for that, too.  So as in our previous communications, our advice is to try and avoid the scary headlines and stick to your financial and investing plan.  Of course if you need to talk, we are here.

Yours,
Lincoln & Justin

8/24/2015

Dear Clients and Friends:

Well, here we go again.

First, don’t panic. We expect that since you are working with us you already know this, but it’s worth mentioning.

Second, since you are investing with us you began with a process in which you chose an allocation that took the certainty of an eventual stock market downturn into account. What this means is that our clients’ accounts are down less than the pure stock market downturns we are all reading about in the press. In fact, the biggest concern we should all be facing is: If the domestic and/or foreign stock markets fall far enough, when will it be advisable to get more aggressive to take advantage of a rebound?

What’s going on? There are three drivers of this downturn: The Federal Reserve Bank is seriously considering raising the “Federal Funds Rate” (short-term banking interest rates). You want some irony? The Fed would be raising rates because the economy is so healthy that if it doesn’t begin to gradually increase the cost of borrowing, inflation could be the result. Raising the cost of borrowing should slow growth and help prevent inflation. So, we have a downturn BECAUSE the economy is healthy.

Next, the Chinese economy, the second largest economy in the world, is in real trouble. China’s ability to sell its goods and services has been harmed by the strengthening of its currency as a result of too-fast growth. That growth has got to slow down, and China, in response, has devalued its currency relative to other world’s currencies, including the dollar. This will make Chinese goods more competitive with the goods and services of corporations around the world (including ours). Additionally, China’s growth has fueled the growth of many American corporations, and a cut back in the speed of that growth should also slow down the expansion of companies around the world. Put differently, China’s roll as one of the world’s largest customers has begun to shrink.

Next, the prices of oil and gas have fallen so far and so fast that this threatens the health of the energy industries around the world and may cause greater instability in the already chaotic Middle East, especially for the nearest U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, that bastion of democracy and women’s rights. In the long run this might be a boon for the kind of energy companies SRI invests in, but in the short term much of American and international business is tied up in the fortunes of the larger petrochemical companies and their misfortunes are part of what is dragging down the markets, ours included.

What should we expect next? There are a few possibilities.

Major Market Collapse?

Many of the stock market pundits and prognosticators are just thrilled with what is going on. “This is the beginning of the downturn we have been predicting!!!” “We were right all along!” they crow gleefully. Some of them believe that we are at the front end of another two-year market collapse, such as the 2007-2009 event. And this may be true. The U.S. currency may be overvalued and ripe for a downturn relative to other currencies. It’s unlikely that the Chinese currency value reduction will do us any good. The “Too Big to Fail” banks are even bigger than they were in 2006, and they are still allowed to combine risky investing and lending in their business model (we can thank Gramm, Leach, Bliley and Bill Clinton for closing down our protections under Glass-Steagall). Our other gift from Bill Clinton, the reduction in regulation of derivatives, has resulted in the growth of under-funded risky investments such as Credit Default Swaps, one of the primary causes of the 2007-2009 downturn.

Minor Correction?

Perhaps this downturn is just a “Correction,” a short-term downturn in the stock market, dropping deeper than ten percent but not so far down as twenty percent. That’s where we are so far, by the way. This happens when the problems are more short-term and not so spread out through the entire economy. When this occurs, professional investors, pension managers, etc., who are not caught up in the media frenzy but are looking for bargains, begin buying when their favorite stocks hit the prices they were hoping to buy them at. You can see the market begin to bounce at the bottom, just as the newspapers and the financial channels are trumpeting the end of the world.

So, which is it, and what is to be done?

Well, if this is just a correction you can watch for that bounce, just when the pundits are howling the loudest. It looked for a bit today like that had already happened, but now we are headed back down again. Best strategy: Do nothing different. If you are holding some cash that you want to invest, once you believe in the recovery, that might be a good opportunity to put that cash to work. But don’t sell in a correction. Keep in mind that in taxable accounts you have probably achieved some capital gains that, if you sell, will cause some unpleasant taxes. More on this in a minute.

We doubt that this downturn is the beginning of a major stock market collapse and recession. Many of those pundits and prognosticators who are crowing that they were right all along are conveniently forgetting that they have been predicting a major collapse for over five years. Even a stopped clock will be right eventually. Someday these folks will be right, too. But we should remember that the causes they were claiming would cause the coming crash usually included massive inflation, gold prices skyrocketing, Oil prices skyrocketing and a collapse in the U.S. Currency. If these effects would be the underlying causes of a massive collapse, this analysis has a problem. The opposite of each of these is what’s happening now.

But what if this really is a massive 2008 style downturn? What then? Let’s look at strategies for the 2007-2009 collapse. If you had invested $100,000 in the S&P 500 in October, 2007 on the day before the downturn began, by March, 2009 your account would have fallen 54% and ON THAT DAY would have been worth only $46,000. By March, 2013, your account would have been back to the $100,000 you invested in October, 2007. By January, 2015 your account would have been worth approximately $127,000, or an approximate after-inflation value of about $110,900.

Now, if instead, at the October 2007 peak you had invested in a savings account paying 0.8%, by January of 2015 your account would have completely avoided the downturn and would be worth about $106,500, or an approximate after-inflation value of about $90,793.

Let’s add taxes to the picture. If we rebalance a taxable account today, let’s not forget that actually its stocks have been growing for years and there will be capital gains taxes to pay. Unlike the above example, where the “losses” were temporary and turned into an adjusted-for-inflation growth, those tax “losses” won’t recover, won’t come back.

What does this suggest? Just this: Pick one dollar of your assets. If you are going to have to spend that dollar on a need that will occur less than six years from now, it would be much better in fixed income (bonds or cash) than in stocks. Using our above example, that dollar, invested in stocks in 2007 and needed in March of 2009, would have been worth only 46 cents.

On the other hand, if you needed that dollar in 2015, still invested in stocks, that dollar today would have been worth something like $1.27.

So, our message hasn’t changed much. We just have more history and experience to back it up. Your portfolio has a stock/bond allocation that you chose based on your short and long-term needs and your stomach for volatility. We could make that allocation more conservative, but in a taxable account this may result in a greater permanent tax cost than the temporary “cost” of the current downturn. In tax-deferring retirement accounts, such as IRAs and 401(k)s, your time horizon Is long-term. Which of the above scenarios would you choose?

And, finally, despite our derision of the pundits, you probably would like us to add our prognostication to the list.

Derivatives are out of control and there is no telling what is going to happen to China. We think that if the downturn falls far enough these problems could kick in and drive it deeper and longer-to-recovery.

On the other hand, a major cause of this “correction” is the coming Federal Reserve increase in its interest rate, the Federal Funds Rate. If this current downturn goes deep enough it is extremely unlikely that the Fed will continue with its plan to raise this rate soon. Once the markets get wind of this, a steep recovery in stock prices is probable. You want to remember that the Fed is planning to raise rates because the economy is healthy, not because we are facing an impending recession. Unemployment is historically low. Corporations are doing historically well (largely by underpaying their workers, we know). The “Too-Big-To-Fail” banks are even bigger, but under the new Obama rules they are also required to maintain substantially higher reserves than they were before 2007. We don’t have the bond sector invested largely in subprime mortgages as it was in 2006.

Eventually there will be a deeper downturn and recession, based on the kind of systemic problems that existed in 2006-2007, but we don’t think this is it. We are inclined to think that before we get that deep, the institutional and professional stock buyers will start buying the bargains that this downturn is providing, and this will give us a flat, lower, volatile market or a rising, volatile market. As we write this it looks like this may already be happening.

If this really is a deep downturn, a couple of years from now we should be offered an opportunity to move some of your bonds and cash into the stock market at wonderfully cheap prices. But don’t bet the farm on our best guesses. Keep your short-term money in fixed vehicles and your long-term money in the equity markets.

And, as always, please call us with any questions, doubts or fears. Make sure that we meet or talk at least four times per year.

It’s a pleasure serving you. That’s the best part of our profession.

Yours,

Justin & Lincoln

TAXES VS. VOLATILITY

July 18th, 2014

Hello, Clients and Friends,

I’ll talk more about SRI next time. This newsletter is about the different definitions of “risk.”

Let’s pretend that it’s 1995. What are the investment signals?

Stock market valuations are historically high. We have passed the historical average duration from the last market bottom to the next market top.

Obviously, the market is about to crash. Right? Not exactly.

You will probably remember that the next five years from 1995 to 2000 were among the best five years in stock market history. The stock markets continued to rise to historic highs and it took five years for the crash (that had been so certain and imminent) to occur.

Well, are we in 1995 again? Or is it really 2000? Or worse, 2007?

As I’ve discussed before, there never has been a time when I’ve not been receiving scary predictions of impending crashes. In fact, the more numerous and scary the sensationalist newsletters, the greater seems to be the likelihood of smooth sailing ahead. Multiple scare newsletters have proven to be an excellent inverse indicator. But there are indicators I do pay serious attention to.

One of them is the general optimism in the popular investment press. Remember, the newsletters have been an inverse indicator.

Another is Robert Shiller’s ten-year average price/earnings ratio, the “Shiller PE 10 Ratio.” Historically, when the Shiller 10 yr ratio is high, expectations for the future should be low, and vice versa. The Shiller ratio is currently higher than average.

Does this mean that a crash is imminent? Well, again, 1995 is a good example of how to look at this. In 1995 the Shiller ratio was high. The next five years were great, but the next fifteen were, on average, among the most dismal in history.

What other indicators are there?

Real Estate Valuations are high. Home prices are back up to their 2004 levels, but not to their 2006 levels (valuations that helped cause the crash in 2007).

The July 8th New York Times had a front-page article on how high valuations are currently.
The middle class has not recovered from the recession, while investment assets have continued to rise. Public consumption needs to rise with corporate growth, otherwise the effect is like a stretching rubber band that needs to snap back some day. Will middle and working-class incomes rise to meet market valuations? Or will stocks fall back to prices justified by working and middle-class incomes?

We are approaching the historic average duration from a market bottom to the next market top (five and one-half years – which would be next September). Does this mean sell by September?
What should we make of this? How should this affect our thinking?

To repeat: 1995 sent similar signals and there were still five more good years (!) ahead.
The following FIFTEEN years were terrible. These signs may not signal an imminent collapse, but they suggest that average returns going forward may be substantially lower than the historical average and volatility may be punishing. Historically, higher volatility has been accompanied by higher long-term returns. That is, we have historically been paid for the pain. The last fourteen years have shown us what it’s like to experience the pain without being paid for it. For example: an allocation that historically would have provided an average annual return of eight percent (over ten years or so) now might be expected to provide an average annual 5.5%. With increased volatility. This fact is at the core of today’s newsletter.

The real problem many investors face is time. If the markets are going to be more volatile with lower returns, older investors may not have any mechanisms available to help them reach their goals by the time they need them. For younger investors this is less of a problem. In 2009 the hysterical newsletters screamed that the stock markets would never recover. They claimed that this tme it was different. Remember?

But now the markets have once again, as they have always done, recovered from their downturns and risen above their previous peaks. The threat to the long-duration investor does not seem to be the downturns themselves, but lower expectations overall, even in a growing environment (see the previous paragraph). But what about investors who need money in the short term? I would say that the risk of a downturn is greater now than it was a year ago. Should we sell some stocks and move their value to bonds? Well, bonds are either yielding less than one percent or earning more while exposing portfolios to higher risks.

It might not be worth the cost of selling. I would say, if you are going to move a large lump sum from your investments, and those investments have grown in a taxable account, you will need to balance the risk of temporary “loss” in a downturn vs. the certainty of the cost of taxes when you sell. This is a planning conversation that we should have. Some investors are asking me if now is the time to sell bonds (which are so unsatisfying and/or risky) and move to more stocks. Now is probably not the moment to get more stock-heavy. Needs which are both short-term and not customary (regular) should be kept in cash and fixed income.

However, with interest rates as low as they are, and longer, higher yielding bonds being so risky, we should probably discuss diversifying your fixed income. Perhaps the biggest “risk” we face now is not periodic and expectable downturns, but lower investment expectations than we had all planned on, and the cost of taxes when we make changes or take withdrawals.
We should talk.

Let me know what you think. Up the Rebels!!

Lincoln

September 23rd, 2013

Dear Clients and Friends,

You remember the old joke, don’t you? The one that goes, “Aren’t you glad I’m not the type to say ‘I told you so’? Well, I told you so.”

Well, I did. Over the last four years I have been handed every newsletter out there predicting the worst stock market crash of all time. Some were pushing gold, some were pushing the gold standard, some were blaming the Fed, some the Democrats, some our “FIAT” currency and some the crisis in Europe. I suggested that one of the best predictors of an upside in the economy and the stock markets is a proliferation of people making a living selling negative predictions. Remember how in 1989 there were five best-sellers predicting the end of our economy as we knew it? Ravi Batra. Paul Erdman. Howard Ruff. Robert Prechter and some fellow named Figgee, predicting hyper-inflation. At the time I said that if there were a deep and terrible crash they would all claim the proof of their theories. However, what if the crash didn’t happen then? If it happened twenty years later, or thirty, would they all cry out that they had been right? How long do we have to wait until we decide they were wrong?

There will always be downturns, some shallow, some deep. If you’re selling newsletters predicting disaster, that disaster has to happen pretty soon, and for the reasons stated. But it simply didn’t happen. Gold has been off its highs by nearly 25%. Inflation is below 2%. The stock markets have passed their previous peaks, yet are still rising. Granted, the markets are rising on the backs of working people and the middle class. I’m talking about economic cycles right now. I’ll get back to “social” issues and what we can do about some of them in a minute.

I have never known a time when there were no risks of economic downturns. The sellers of economic doom and gloom have used those risks to make millions selling fear. Fear is what drives America now. We don’t let our children outside to play with other kids on the block because we are terrified of “stranger abductions.” Nobody notices that the rate of stranger abductions has not increased. Just the reporting of them. “If it bleeds, it leads.” How can we watch the news today without shivering in terror?

There are risks in the economy now, as there have been since 2009. Some of them are greater risks than existed in 2007. The banks are bigger and are taking more risks. There are more credit default swaps being traded than ever before. There are Iran, Syria and Egypt. Will we be at war again, and soon? Angela Merkel was re-elected yesterday, promising more austerity in Europe. Some economists believe that continued austerity will cause a depression there.

Of course, there are the environmental issues, long-term risks to the animal life on the planet and to the economy. Climate Change / Global Warming, overpopulation, the end of clean water, diseases released as we cut down the rain forests, the creation of super bugs by the use of antibiotics in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and my favorite, massive species die-off. These are major disasters in the making, but they aren’t going to collapse capitalism or your portfolio this year or next – maybe not in our lifetimes (“Heck, let’s leave it for the kids to fix”).

Then, maybe the biggest short / mid-term risk to the economy: The influence of corruption on the economic cycle. Out of the last six stock market downturns, at least four of them were driven by corruption, rather than by the normal cyclical nature of our economy. Drexel Burnham Junk bonds, The S&L crisis, the rigging of corporate balance sheets by the “Big Eight” accounting firms and the astonishing tie-in between predatory lending and the creating of fictitious value in the derivatives built on those loans.

So, what’s the message here? There will always be downturns in every sector you can invest in. However, don’t believe those who are making a living selling fear of those downturns. They were wrong in 1989 and they have been wrong over the last four years.

Instead, make realistic plans for your future. Adjust for changes in your long-term results. Allocate as if there will be growth in your savings, as well as downturns, while keeping the money you intend to spend for your short-term needs out of the stock markets.

Meanwhile, here is a very strong possibility. Perhaps even a probability: As the new debate over the debt ceiling approaches, this will cause uncertainty in the markets, and almost certainly a downturn this fall. If the Republicans drive us over a cliff the downturn will be greater. So make sure that any of your short-term needs are invested in conservative instruments, such as short-term bonds, cash and community notes (keeping in mind that not all issuers of community notes are safe – you should talk with me about this).

Don’t try to time the markets here. This isn’t the “big crash of all time” coming up. I think that while the bull market is not yet over, it may take a short nap. If the Republicans and conservative Democrats cave, remembering the price they paid for shutting down the government in 1995, there might not be any downturn worth mentioning at all. I’ve been hearing of the imminent and soon-to-come collapse of capitalism since 1969. Those predictions just keep on coming. Keep on sending them to me – just don’t take them all too seriously. I expect capitalism to change or fall someday. Our economy can’t keep on growing forever.

One of the main reasons the markets have continued rising as they have is that many corporations have laid off their workers, then hired them back as contractors, working long hours at reduced wages without benefits. This practice results in historic increases in productivity and this grows the value of their stock. Such behavior is unsustainable.

With the failure and shrinking of organized labor from a third of the working population to less than seven percent there is no labor core to the Democratic party. We need to make labor policy a central issue of national and local elections. Can anyone remember anything at all accomplished by Obama’s first Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis? I can’t.

What can we do? Labor relations are a primary concern of socially responsible investing and SRI shareholder engagement. This needs to increase. Every year the SRI professionals around the world debate what issues we will press. Please write to me, to your portfolio management firms, to First Affirmative and to your SRI mutual funds, asking them to keep labor issues in the forefront of their activism. This is crucial.

What else can we do right now? What actions will be more than symbolic?

I suggest we put some focused muscle behind a few wedge issues, struggles whose goals can be accomplished and if they succeed, will change the nature of the conversation.

I will pick three for now.

First, contribute to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign. She (and John McCain !!) is spearheading a bill that would reinstate Glass-Steagall, the law that kept the banks from gambling with your money (until Clinton, Rubin, Summers, Gramm, Leach, Bliley and CitiGroup killed it). Tell your bankers that your financial advisor recommends this and watch their faces. elizabethwarren.com

Next, contribute to Healthcare for All, the lead organization fighting for Single payer in California. healthcareforall.org/

Next, contribute to the Public Banking Institute, the lead organization fighting for public banking in America. publicbankinginstitute.org

And finally, I am going to be out of the office (and out of the country) from September 26th to October 8th, tending to a family emergency. Then, from October 24th to October 31st I will be at our annual SRI conference, this year in Colorado, learning how to better serve all of you folks.

Thanks for being supportive of socially responsible investing.

Up the Rebels !!

Lincoln

December 6, 2012

Dear Friends & Clients:  Let’s talk about your investments, what’s going on in the economy, the markets, SRI, etc.

 If you are well diversified into SRI stocks (domestic, foreign, large and small-cap) and bonds, over the last twelve months your overall portfolio has probably experienced an internal rate of return about one-third to one-half of the upside of the S&P 500, which is a pure large-cap domestic stock index. 

 This should not surprise you.  As we have discussed in the past, diversification that includes both stocks and bonds should underperform during upturns and outperform (fall less sharply) during downturns, and that is exactly what has been happening.   From the market bottom in March, 2009, until March of 2012, the stock market rose in a typical recovery pattern.  Since then the large-cap domestic stock market has been very volatile, but has only gone sideways. 

 In 2007-2009, when the stock market fell 54%, if you were diversified your account fell less than the S&P’s drop of 54%.  Diversification helped.  Now that the economy is recovering your account is rising slowly, more slowly than pure stocks.  The most commonly used foreign stock index, the EAFE index, rose only a third of the S&P 500. The Barclays Aggregate Bond Index rose one sixth as high as the S&P. 

 As we have discussed before, the asset class with the greatest risk right now is long-to-maturity bonds.  When prevailing interest rates rise, the longer bonds tend to lose value.  The only way to limit that risk is to keep your bonds “short” to maturity, and, while this keeps that portion of your portfolio stable, it lowers your bond interest compared with the aggregate index. 

We are currently in one of those periods in which SRI has underperformed conventional investing, with the SRI index coming in at about 2/3 of the S&P for the last twelve months.  Now, every strategy has its time in the sun and its time in the clouds.  SRI is no different.  Since its inception in 1990, the primary SRI stock index, the DSI 400, has outperformed the S&P 500, on average.  There will always be shorter periods, such as the one we are in, when SRI underperforms.  This is usually true during times of war and rises in the price of oil, but the biggest difference this year is that our portfolios don’t include Apple Computer while many conventional portfolios do.  Apple is so huge that it is nearly single-handedly boosting the conventional indices it is in.  Is Apple a bubble, about to fall as it has risen?  Not necessarily, but I doubt it can continue to grow as it has over the last couple of years. 

Should you have put your entire portfolio in large-cap stocks a year ago?  Hindsight says “yes,” but do you remember the risks in the economy back then? It was a scary time for stocks.   Both political parties seemed willing to drive our economy off a cliff to win the election, and dissolution of the European Community and currency seemed imminent.  Many of you were doubtful when I suggested that we were already in a recovery.  Many conventional investors took their entire portfolios to cash.  Had the markets crashed back then they would have said that a coming downturn had been obvious, and weren’t they smart.  Instead, they have missed the recovery, so far. 

And what about the so-called “Fiscal Cliff?”  Like so many of the Republican framings, this one is intended to provide cover for cutting discretionary and “entitlement” programs.  How did they make “entitlement” a bad word?  Aren’t we entitled to it because we’ve paid for it?  Now that’s successful framing.

 There is no Fiscal Cliff.  The higher tax rates will take a year to work their way into our economy.  Ditto with the cuts in programs, such as the military and federal agencies.  Maybe there will be a “Fiscal Slope.”  Obama and Congress will have a few months to fix this.  Once that happens the uncertainty should be over and I imagine that worldwide stock markets may respond enthusiastically.  If we do not have a budget deal Congress by December 31^st, the stock market may fall a bit, but the slump should be short-lived.

 What should Obama and the Congress really be doing about our debt and recession?  First, the debt isn’t the problem both parties are making it out to be.  Interest payments on the debt, that’s the difficulty.  Coming out of WWII the Federal debt was something like 136% of GDP.  Keynesian stimulus (like the GI Bill) enabled us to grow out of most of the debt.  We shouldn’t eliminate public and private debt entirely, since that’s our money supply.  What Congress should do is print the money we need to solve our problems with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.  Not borrow it – print it. The Federal Reserve has been creating plenty of money, but the banks are holding on to it instead of lending.

 So, what are your options as an investor now?

 Well, one possibility is getting rid of some or all of your bonds (for the time being).  Our chief bond manager calculates that if/when prevailing interest rates recover to their historical average level, the longer-duration bonds could lose more than 40% in market value (which is why he is keeping most of our investors’ bonds short-to-maturity).  Keeping your bond durations short means that they protect their part of your portfolio, but short bonds yield less interest than the rate of inflation, slowly hemorrhaging value.  Do keep in mind that shifting your allocation from bonds to stocks increases risk, too.  

 So, right now you get to choose your risks.  There is the risk of underperformance (keeping your current allocation to short bonds) vs. the risk of having too much of your portfolio vulnerable to market moves (by moving money from bonds to stocks).  Please call me and let’s discuss this.

 What can we do politically?  On the larger issues, we are powerless in the face of the fantasy world agreed upon by both parties, so I think we should focus on what is actually accomplishable and might provide a wedge that would make a difference.  Let’s see if we can get a Single Payer plan instituted in California and a State Bank.  And let’s see if we can get our President to support organized labor, as he promised he would (and has not).

Seriously, please discuss this with your tax preparer as soon as possible.  Should we be selling a bunch of your stocks which have unrealized capital gains before the end of this year in order to realize those gains at the current capital gains tax rate, rather than waiting for the rates on capital gains to rise, probably next year? 

That’s enough for now.

 Remember to raise hell and have a good time.  I hope you are well and thriving.

 Up the Rebels!!

Lincoln Pain, CFP®, AIF®
Effective Assets™ is an independent registered investment advisor (RIA) registered with the State of California.