Our other value stock pick besides the strong fund is the American Century Equity Income fund. We liked this fund a heck of a lot more a year ago, before it was flooded with new investor assets, but the fund still has some room to grow before it really begins to suffer. We're watching two things right now: asset levels and performance. If this fund breaks about $1.3 billion or so, or if we start seeing a slide in performance, we'll move into one of our backup choices.
Any way you slice and dice it, the market is expensive. This is not a new thing. The market has been expensive for at least the last decade, if not longer. We've been complaining about valuations being sky high for years, but that doesn't mean there aren't good categories of funds in which to put your money. You can still invest in a historically overvalued market, and probably should.
The portfolio as a whole has been essentially flat, up just .022%. Stocks were weak this month, but this portfolio has a mere 25% stock position, and that in safer value type stocks. One large move was a - 4.49% pullback for the Strong Dividend Income fund. Since the fund is only 10% of assets, this didn't destroy the portfolios return.
It wasn't all bad news. Small cap value indexes rose around 3 - 4%. For those keeping track, these types of stocks are now up well over 50% since the large cap indexes hit the skids. That's a pretty big move... for stocks that aren't really growing earnings, broadly speaking.
The Conservative portfolio reflects the areas of the world financial markets in which we feel an investor can safely earn a yield with some opportunity for appreciation. We are weighting toward out-of-favor areas like foreign and high-yield bonds, and passing on areas that are traditionally a larger part of a low-risk portfolio (like longer-term US government bonds). We feel those areas have run up to the point where the future potential is weak.
Is it me, or does it seem like the Dow has been kicking around 10,000 forever? Forever actually started in 1999 when the Dow first broke 10,000. It's been kicking around in the 9,000 - 11,000 range ever since.
