The Conservative portfolio made its biggest one month move to date, up 3.3%. Bonds and stocks were both strong this month and didn’t cancel each other out like they have in other months. Every fund in the portfolio was up this month. As we mentioned in this months newsletter, this type of convergence can raise risk. ...read the rest of this article»

The Conservative portfolio was up .68% in March. Stocks were up in March, with the S&P 500 and Dow up about 1% and 1.5% respectively. Long-term US government bonds were down about 1.2% in March, but all our bond fund choices were up in this portfolio. We don’t feel longer term US government bonds are the place to be right now. If rates climb fast, our bond fund choices will likely lose money also, just not as badly as we think government bonds will fall. We’re considering investing in a variable rate fund here shortly. ...read the rest of this article»

The Conservative portfolio was almost completely flat in February. The positive action was again from bond funds. Bonds were strong on investor's fear of war and stocks across the board, with the portfolio's high yield, foreign, and investment grade U.S. bond funds all up over 1%. ...read the rest of this article»

The conservative portfolio was down 0.20% for the month of January. The standout again was the American Century International bond fund (BEGBX) up 2.87% for the month. Remember two months when we said the dollar was about to start working in the favor of international investments again? We're still considering lightening up a bit on our foreign bond positions or moving to a hedged bond fund. ...read the rest of this article»

The conservative portfolio was up 1.14% for the month of December, but the positive action was mostly from bond funds this month. The standout was the American Century International bond fund (BEGBX) up an astounding 6.52% for the month. Remember last month when we said the dollar was about to start working in the favor of international investments again? Basically 85% of that return was the result of the US dollar falling. ...read the rest of this article»

The conservative portfolio was up 2.6% for the month of November, but the positive action was mostly from stock funds in the portfolio, currently 50% of the total after recent increases in its equity allocation. While we felt weakness in stocks have created opportunities for risk averse investors, and we were hesitant to stay in near-zero yield cash positions, we were a bit premature in these moves. ...read the rest of this article»

The conservative portfolio was up just under 1% for the month of October. The positive action was mostly from the portfolio's stock funds, not the larger bond position, which was flat for the month. ...read the rest of this article»

The conservative portfolio continues being our best performing portfolio, which is how you'd want a safe portfolio to do in a down market. Dragging it down are weak performance in the few stock funds in the portfolio. We are concerned about the future of bonds given that we see little room for rates to go anywhere but up from these levels. ...read the rest of this article»

We recently shifted some of our money market allocation in this fund into the very beaten down Vanguard Utilities Income fund. The fund rallied up, then promptly fee in recent market weakness. So far October looks strong for the fund. ...read the rest of this article»

While we were very big on bonds 2 years ago when we first started designing allocation portfolios, we are less enthusiastic today. Bonds have had strong returns in the last two years as interest rates have come down across the board. We feel we are at the bottom of an interest rate cycle. ...read the rest of this article»