How did we beat BOTH the stock and bond indexes in April? Many of the out-of-favor areas we hold rapidly became favorable - notably Japan and telecom (both up over 8%).  Utilities were up almost 6% AND interest rates were down again, sending our longer-term bond fund up. Best of all, commodities tanked which boosted our oil short – usually up only when stocks are down. ...read the rest of this article»

Wow. The S&P 500 and the Dow both reached record highs last month, each breaking previous marks set in 2007. Don’t hold your breath for a new NASDAQ record though – that’s a solid 10-20 years off (and maybe even longer than that if adjusting for inflation).  ...read the rest of this article»

What we’re really seeing here is the steady erosion in returns of anything other than bonds. Among the worst areas over the last five years – sporting serious negative returns of between 5 and 10% per year on average (as opposed to positive annualized returns of the same magnitude in U.S. stock funds) - are gold mining-oriented and commodities funds. Gold the metal is still higher than 5 years ago, though the yellow metal is finally showing some erosion in price and popularity.  ...read the rest of this article»

All this upside is starting to attract attention. Investors are warming to stock funds again. This tends to happen shortly before market dips, and if bonds continue to slide as stocks rise we would expect to cut back on equities and shift a little more to debt, but currently stocks are still more appealing valuation-wise than bonds are. ...read the rest of this article»

Investing in markets that seem poised to plummet can be more rewarding than investing when things seem safe. Sadly many investors bailed out of stock funds in recent years. Good news on the bad news front: most every serious financial problem facing America was just kicked down the road. ...read the rest of this article»

Slowly but surely the Powerfund Portfolios are inching up on the S&P 500’s double-digit 2012 return. Competing against the S&P is a challenge because the portfolios are almost always at a lower risk profile because of our allocation to bonds. Even when we are closer heavily allocated to stocks and light on bonds (usually after big slides in the market) we are more diversified than the S&P 500. ...read the rest of this article»

The good times for stocks came to an end in October, though not too abruptly. The S&P 500 was down 1.86% for the month, but is still up an impressive 14.16% for the year. The recent storm hitting the financial epicenter of America and the world had no negative impact on stocks other than a historic closing of the exchange. Surprisingly, foreign stocks did well while emerging market stocks declined. Bonds were essentially flat for the month, as were both Powerfund Portfolios.  ...read the rest of this article»

2012 is turning out to be a good year for stocks and bonds. With September’s 2.58% increase in the S&P 500 equities are up just over 16% since Jan 1. The YTD total bond market fund is up 4% through the end of September. This in the face of on-again-off-again Euro death spiral news and a domestic economy that, while not stalling, is sputtering or at least misfiring outside of technology.  ...read the rest of this article»

In the absence of scary economic news, stocks drift higher – like the roughly 2.25% gain in August. We would expect this to continue if we avoid a deep recession and any debt market shocks that drive rates higher.  ...read the rest of this article»

The rebound in stocks at the end of June carried through to July, though with some slides along the way. It’s a market scared of another collapse, yet it keeps finding support from (probably) not much else than the trillions of dollars globally that needs to be invested and the fact that cash and bonds should be very low return assets for the next few years. ...read the rest of this article»