Steel_Magnolia's Account Talk

[Birchtree]

I remember in 1981 when the 30 year long bond was selling at $50 and yielding 15%. And because there was so much fear of continuing inflation no one would buy bonds. Now we have just the opposite - every mom and pop wants them at under a 2% yield - not for me because I know what is coming - we are going to have a robust economic growth pattern as soon as November rolls around.

 

[Steadygain]

Dear sweet priceless friend,
There will always be misunderstandings, confusion, conflict, and brief arguments between the very truest and best of friends. I am totally at peace with where I am as of last night - and for me there is nothing more important than allowing this very genuine freedom to remain.

You are, and have been, and will always be one of the most beautiful and fulfilling aspects of my life and the very highest quality expression of life itself. As I have stressed over and over to 'our dear friend' the body itself makes no difference - is never meant to be how you 'value' yourself - or how anyone - is meant to value and honor you.

The difficulty is in no way a lack from you and I am so terribly sorry for what has transpired. I don't know that anyone could honestly have a better heart and be more genuinely received and accepted.

This is NOT a time to focus on 'popularity' - because NOTHING would hurt you more. Find the ONES that are TRUE through and through and let them be your Strength and Hope and Comfort. Birch, Squale, Alevie will forever be my truest friends because they are deeply brother and sister. There are many others that are as 'wonderful' and 'true' as you could want and need.

PLEASE - do NOT waste your time on the others because they honestly have no clue how to show you the love you need. Nothing will take your life more than them.

I am not abandoning YOU - or anyone else - but yesterday I was given a freedom that I can't risk distroying. I believe in the very best and I am at peace with my life and all that has happened here.

May you find the peace, and joy, and happiness you deeply deserve.

Steady (the Sparkling Friend - the everlasting Blue White Diamond)

 

[Steel_Magnolia]

I don't expect the MB to be very bust the next few days. And I hope that everyone has a great Labor Day weekend. Please be safe! And be ready to write a paper in your Account Talk entitled, "How I Spent My Three Day Weekend."

:laugh:

Maggie

 

[nasa1974]

I don't expect the MB to be very bust the next few days. And I hope that everyone has a great Labor Day weekend. Please be safe! And be ready to write a paper in your Account Talk entitled, "How I Spent My Three Day Weekend."

:laugh:

Maggie

Shoot that's easy. WORK, WORK and more WORK.

 

[Viva_La_Migra]

Shoot that's easy. WORK, WORK and more WORK.

It used to be wine, women, and song...now it's beer, the old lady, the rug rats, and TV!

 

[Steel_Magnolia]

I don't expect the MB to be very bust the next few days. ...

I of course meant "busy" rather than bust. This MB will never be bust. :cheesy: My right hand is starting to work sometimes but it still doesn't spell worth a darn.

Nasa, sorry you have to spend the holiday specifically set aside as a rest from Labors at work!

And VLM, did your doctor tell you, "No more wine, no more women, but you can sing as much as you want to."?

Sorry. Old joke.

Have a good one, everyone, and thanks for the visit to my MB home.

Maggie

 

[Steel_Magnolia]

In my own charting, I got a dead cross in F Fund yesterday, a golden cross in C Fund 2 days ago, and a golden cross in S and I Funds 3 days ago. So today I changed my allocation to 53% G, 14% F Fund, 13% C Fund, 13% S Fund and 7% I Fund.

A lot less F and a lot more in stock funds. Still not very brave, but then us retired FERS folks have to be so careful with our capital.

And I was relieved to see CH's blog confirm that there was a SS buy signal today.

FWIW,
Maggie

 

[burrocrat]

wish you would have said that earlier.

 

[Steel_Magnolia]

wish you would have said that earlier.

Sorry, burro! There are days I can think well enough to discuss the markets, and days that I can't. Good thing that's getting a little better all the time or I'd really be scared about managing my TSP - you know, that ONE-THIRD of my retirement. FERS was such a better idea than CSRS was ....

Maggie

 

[Steel_Magnolia]

I found an interesting market rotation model that may be of some help to us when we're making our TSP decisions. Do you know the ETF Prophet site? The authors of the site are folks like the writers of BZB Trader, Skill Analytics, Market Rewind and several other favorite bloggers who combined their blogs into this one site, and I recommend it highly.

I was looking around the site this morning and stumbled on this market rotation model. The model uses SPY (similar to our C Fund), IWM (similar to our S Fund), EEM (somewhat similar to our I Fund), AGG (similar to our F Fund) as well as DBC for commodities and UUP, the US dollar index.

The model ranks those six funds using a relative strength formula and invests in the highest ranked fund once a week on Friday or Monday. Here is what the current rating is:

View attachment 9989

I hope you find this as informative as I did!

Maggie

 

[WorkFE]

Very nice Steel. Thanks

 

[Steel_Magnolia]

You're welcome, WorkFE. Help yourself to some of that red velvet cake on the counter there. And Silverbird has graciously made a pot of decaf to go with it.

Maggie

 

[WorkFE]

The cake I'll take but I'm a leaded guy.:nuts:

 

[alevin]

Maggie, I like the rotation! I have DBC in my trading account, but it hasn't been doing much since I bought a year ago, couple times I coulda sold but a year wasn't up yet for LT cap gains so I didn't sell.

Question, there are 3 tables there and they all have EEM, but they don't all 3 have all the others of the 6. so how do they figure out when one of the others of IWM or DBC or SPY rotate to the top for example? the other tables have different ETFs, like QQQQ substituted for IWM in at least one of the other tables. I looked for explanation but didn't find one. Did you?

 

[Steel_Magnolia]

Maggie, I like the rotation!

Question, there are 3 tables there and they all have EEM, but they don't all 3 have all the others of the 6. so how do they figure out when one of the others of IWM or DBC or SPY rotate to the top for example? the other tables have different ETFs, like QQQQ substituted for IWM in at least one of the other tables. I looked for explanation but didn't find one. Did you?

Hi Allie, I didn't find an explanation either.

As you can see, each of the three groups has a slightly different focus. Group 2 has the leveraged QLD instead of IWM, and the inverse of Vanguard's total stock market VTI instead of UUP. Group 3 uses the Q's and SH (the short S&P 500 ETF) instead.

Maybe it just depends on personal preference. For us TSPers, it's easy to pick Group 1 because those ETFs are closest to our fund choices.

Maggie

P.S.

"Allie and Mags." Sounds like a pair of TV detectives, doesn't it? Do you want to be Sharon Gless or Tyne Daly? :nuts:

 

[alevin]

You're way taller-you get to be sharon.

 

[Steel_Magnolia]

Hi gang, thanks for coming by to help us all remember what this day means to our history. There is blueberry pecan coffee cake on the counter, please help yourselves. The green rimmed coffee pot holds some of Silverbird's special grind decaf and the orange rimmed coffee pot has french roast for WorkFE and anyone else who needs their caffeine. Milk and sodas are in the fridge.

Some of you more long-time members of the MB may remember my personal 9/11 story. If my son had listened to me about some job advice he would have been in the south tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Last weekend we had a family party. Our son's two-year old daughter kept us in stitches the whole time. She had just learned a new phrase and everything was "HOwee COW!" this and "HOwee COW!" that. And I have sat through much of this long night remembering this and other things that I wouldn't even have realized that I lost had our son joined the causality list on that fateful day.

I'm sure that most of you have a story of how that day touched your life too. So please, relax, share the good cake and the great company. Tell your 9/11 story if you'd like. But most of all, help us celebrate with thankfulness our families, our great country, and our way of life.

 

[alevin]

Ah Maggie, I know my own story, nothing like yours, but I will never forget where I was, what I heard, what I saw and how the reality and truth slowly and then suddenly sunk in past my initial explanations to myself that day-it was a process of realization for me, comprehension just didn't stretch to the truth at first, took probably 20 minutes to full comprehension.

But have friends on the early federal disaster-response teams that went to NYC. I heard some of their stories and still cry: of finding city firefighters slumped on the curb in a daze-disassociated, lost in space, getting them in a fed vehicle and driving around and around, letting the guy talk, regain sense of reality once more. Helping figure out how to clear the debris-barges to NJ and making it happen. public affairs people figuring out how to let the country know what was happening.

A year later, I was sitting in a restaurant in tiny-town central part of my state, with 9 other people in my profession -which is fairly specialized. We all live and work in this leftcoast state across the country from NYC.

One of us had been on one of those first disaster-response teams, another was spouse of that person (they were completely out of contact for days on end while the team was in NYC), they were native NYC people, both of them. they both had lost friends. My age.

another was from NYC, 24 yrs old. brandnew to our state the day of 9/11, life belongings in the car, didn't know a soul in her new commmunity-completely alone in life that day. Knew people in the tower, people she'd known her whole life. out of touch with family in NYC completely that day.

Another of our little group was flying back home from back east that day, plane grounded in MT, couldn't contact her husband-another member of our little specialty group. out of 10 of us, 5 lives had been directly impacted by events. never felt the country more interconnected as they told their stories at our table in tiny-town central leftcoast state that night.

 

[Steel_Magnolia]

ETF Prophet's "Market Rewind" section yesterday was the updated chart of major indices. It is a little hard to read but it gives some great information. So I think it's worth the eye strain.
View attachment 9998

"...The S&P 500 (SPY) finished a second week higher by +0.5%. In stark contrast for the holiday shortened week were long-dated Treasuries (TLT), which continued their move lower by another -1.2%, now down to potential immediate support.

As intimated last weekend, widespread overbought readings were largely a function of the rapid move off a “V”-bottom. However, the more mild pace of this week’s advance reduced a great deal of this statistical pressure, making this particular retest of the upper-end of our multi-month range all the more intriguing for the bulls. Still, short-term RSI levels remain quite elevated, and the VIX, now >10% below its fifteen-day moving average, has fallen perhaps too rapidly...."


Read more: http://etfprophet.com/etf-rewind-week-36-91010/#more-4811#ixzz0zPuNW5Fu​

As a reminder, the analogs to our funds are SPY, IWM, EFA, and you would probably have to use TLT for F Fund because AGG isn't listed here.

Maggie

 

[Steel_Magnolia]

My favorite read of the morning is an article on Seeking Alpha entitled "Enjoy the Sigh of Relief Rally."

Here's an excerpt:

"...In the grand scheme of things, we will look back at mid year 2010 and view it as a brief pause in the cyclical recovery. A pause that compelled the U.S. to fix its anti-growth government policy, a pause that compelled the Eurozone to pass austerity measures, and a pause that established a new baseline from which the economy could resume its upward trajectory. I really believe that the flat market performance of August was hugely bullish for the rest of the year as it showed us the bad news is already priced in. ...August action shifted the path of least resistance from the downside to the upside. ..."

Have a good one!
Maggie