The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
--Herbert Spencer

Chartz and Table Zup!!

Been gone. Not Long Gone. Just work and taxes and personal stuff. And a 95% cash position frees up the mind and shoulders remarkably effectively. If that 95% doesn't square with what you see on my 401 worksheets, itz cuz I've got a pair of IRA's and a trading account as well as a 401a. They are each way cash. And the 401 is gonna get cash heavy too.
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Gary Dvorchak at Realmoney.com notes that if you invested $1000 in the Russell 1000 Growth Index (American growth stocks) in 1999, you'd have $947 today. He notes that this is BEFORE the big 2000 run up for a real, fair, no cheatin' view of what big cap American passive growth stocks investing looks like.

My chart service allowed me to look at the Russell 1000 Mutual Fund and the S&P 500 Fund from May 26th 2000 to now. Same thing. A lot of exposure to risk and breaking even or looking like a turd in a punch bowl to show for it. Gary also looks at what you'd have if you just picked out great stocks of great companies like Intel, Motorola, EMC, AIG, and Microsoft. That's the second graph. Gary says that there are times when "Buy great stocks of great companies and hold them or buy the stock market because long term, stocks do really well." just doesn't work. See our experience with McMorgan Funds. If you are gonna work for 100 years, and retire for 10, buy the market. That's a long enough "long term" and short enough retirement for you to ignore your retirement money. If you aren't going to work for 100 years and retire for 10, ya GOTTA watch what's happening. That's why I've taken care of business for myself since 9/04 and why I'm protecting what I got to show for my work. Check out my worksheets. THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT....

Speaking of going down in flames, look at the first chart for the time period of 2000 to 2003. That's what a bear market looks like. The trend is down and periodically it gets overdone. Someone yells "Fire" in the crowded theater and everybody blows out short positions and loads up on stocks. Ya get a vicious bear market rally that gets the serial bottom callers foaming at the mouth. The sharp guys short stocks to retail buyers, the little guys load up, the boyz at the pits jam the market down and cover the shorts with stock that the retail investor blows out at a loss.. And then the bear market that was in progress, continues down.

I spend a lotta time reading arcane investment stuff in order to learn enough to avoid doing stupid things and to occasionally do the right thing. It's way too much and way too dynamic for me to synopsize here on a regular basis. But I'm not shy about telling you what I'm doin' with my retirement money based on what I think. And that's to be BIG TIME and going bigger in cash for the 401a.

I reserve the right to try to pick up pennies in front of steamrollers in my trading account, but that's because don't race motorcycles anymore and I fill my quota o' crazy in a different way. That's not food and shelter money for when I'm old that I'm riskin'....