Charts and tables up. Check out the AlarmFund.com tables. That and the stock charts and the real estate and international news tells a story I'll want to think and write about and act upon...talk to me about it at the hall this month.

significant stuff in the news...

http://www.slate.com/id/2148344/

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/08/3 ... -rumsfeld/

Click on it. I'm reminded of the period near the end of Jimmy Carter's first and last term. You could feel that his claim on the electorate was dissipating by the day. He was not hated, he was not a bad man, he was just becoming irrelevant to what the country's voters wanted from its leadership and Ronald Reagan was waiting in the wings. Carter was crushed in the election and IIRC, he conceded the election with the West Coast polls still open and sent/kept a lot of demos home with state and local candidates/issues still being contested. Kinda the very last pratfall.

I sense the same absolute irrelevance building about what the Bush administration represents as far as what the country's voters would like to see. The 9/11 covers everything message is starting to get old, especially since it doesn't appear to be working or even very truthful. Unfortunately, I don't see the Democratic Ronald Reagan equivalent in the wings and the Republicans seem to have a much higher quality political operatives than the Carter/Demo administration had/has. Still, I think the upcoming economic situation will deteriorate for many as the '08 presidential election approaches and that's going to count for a lot. I just don't see the democratic alternative falling into place. Hope springs eternal....

Back to the 401a. Check out the chart (Clickit if ya wanna...)



Since the correction in May, the trend is up, but it's just barely there in some funds and very weak in others. Something big has changed. It appears that we've had the last harrah in housing and the reversion to the mean is well under way. Read the Sunday paper. Any Sunday paper. There are other things going on that will have profound and long lasting effects on the ecomomy and the stock market and the 401a. I've written about the '03 recovery getting long in the tooth and it may have come to pass. Here's some links that I found of interest...

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/ ... _wron.html

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/S ... mp;siteid=

What was right in 04 and 30% return in two years ago, is no more. Unless of course, oil drops in price by 20% to 30%, peace breaks out in the Mid East, or China goes up in flames without negative consequences to the US. Barring that, I'm 40% in cash and looking to do the right thing.
So here's what I think I need to do. We've come through a time when free money (1%) made almost every bet a winner. For years almost every one of our 401a funds was something of a winner. If one or more lagged or one or more excelled, they all pretty much made made money at least most of the time. The rising tide ain't there no more. Money anyplace on the table isn't an automatic winner. Now there are winners and losers and maybe a lot more losers than winners. Look at the difference between our high octane high growth growth stock fund and another growth fund that I've been invested in in the past.



It's all about having more winners and fewer losers and being able to hedge. I want to see more alternatives like NEEGX. One fund a sector aint enough when the going gets tough. I want to choose not only among sectors, I want to chose a better (at least for now) fund from more than one offering per sector. Do you? If not, why not? It all starts with asking for a choice. That's how we got more than just McMorgan's dog of a fund. I asked.

See ya at the hall. It might be a big one...