Chartz and Table Zup.

"The market is not a sofa, it is not a place to get comfortable."

Jim Cramer

You know about clickin' on these....right?




an' this




The first chart is what I, in part, dodged by going/being ready to go to cash when the multi year upcycle/debt and mortgage bubble bull market ended in Nov 07-Jan 08. You make money if your investments go up, or if your investments hold their own as everybody else's goes down. That said, is the upturn in the 401a fundz that started in mid March a bear market rally or a dead cat bounce off a short term bottom, interupting a multyear downtrend? Or is showing clear sailing up and away now that we've corrected and hit THE longterm bottom?

I suspect that there is more ugly to follow. So I got a plan for it in place; big time cash in the 401a Met Life GIC for the foreseeable future. But I'm also readin' an' chartin' to see what actually happens when the future gets here. If I'm wrong about predictin' the future, that means being ready to bail on one plan and put another in place, if that's what's called for.

The second chart shows two 401a stock fundz that I've identified as really dumb places to put my money. I've made money anytime I didn't put money in these two fundz. The chart also shows the performance of a 401a bond fund that illustrates that if you don't check things out, you can match limited upside performance with significant downside risk and get exactly that in a really short time.

The second chart also shows the performance of the ultimate fear fund, the American Funds US Gov Securities Fund. I've got a huge proportion of my 401a currently in the Met Life GIC. That is a bet, nothing more or less, that Met Life won't blow up. It is based on the ongoing Fed bailout of the overleveraged financial system. My position in the GIC is owning an x dollar promise from Met Life to pay me x dollars on demand, and nothing else. I believe that the Fed sees that Met Life not keeping that promise to me as the financial equivalent of nuclear winter. So I believe that the Fed WILL see that a Met life default won't happen...... well, prolly won't happen.

On the other hand, a position of x dollars in the US Gov Securities Fund is owning x dollars of the securities of a financial entity with huge financial and real estate assets, guns, soldiers, police, tanks, bombers, and a treasury with the right to tax and print money. THAT'S a SAFE place to put your money.

But the US Security Fund doesn't pay much. In the 80's, when things got REALLY bad, I had my cash in a US Gov Securities Money Market fund where the average maturity of the holdings (100% US gov securities) was under a week. That's as close to cash in hand as you get and payed just about as much. Been there, done that. So I'm in the GIC because it earned 4.75% last year vs the Fed Security Fundz' 1.2%. I'm rollin' the dice 'cuz I'm not that scared yet. YMMV cuz' we only share certain goals/mindsets/risk vs rewards tolerance etc...

See ya at the hall....