Monthly Archives: May 2013

Hello everyone

As most of you know, May has been a great month so far for the markets.   All of the indexes are performing very well, and my preliminary proprietary data is reflecting that S-Fund will be the leader for this month.   Today is May 22, so that leaves us with six (6) more trading days in the month.  It should be noted that the markets are closed on Memorial Day, May 27.

Today witnessed some nervousness in response to the release of the recent Federal Reserve Board meeting minutes and testimony by Ben Bernanke to members of Congress.   In summary, Ben Bernanke told Congress that the bond buying program in place, may slow, and that monetary policy may become tightened in the future.

As a result, the SP 500 Index closed lower, on very high volume.  However I don’t believe this is reason to panic, as the evening SP 500 futures trading indicated that “traction” was found and the futures were trading higher than the day session lows.   See charts below:

Again, I am not overly concerned about the nervousness surrounding the monetary policy, but in the end, we must let the market tell us what to do.  For now, things are still good but today’s downward price action on high volume is an attention-getter.   It will require that we closely monitor things in the weeks to come.   Note that Friday May 24, will likely be a low volume day, due to traders on Wall Street not being at work, having left early for the long weekend.  So whatever happens Friday, should probably be disregarded.

My opinion is that the economy is on the rebound and things are looking positive.  My personal TSP Allocation is 100% S-Fund.   At this point, 100% S-Fund or 50% S-Fund and 50% C-Fund would both be fine.

I wanted to say “thanks” for all the emails and compliments sent.  As always, if you find this site useful, and/or your TSP balance has benefited from the information posted here, please pass the site to your friends and coworkers.

Thanks for reading….

– Bill Pritchard

Good Evening Folks

I am TDY on my MacBook Retina, and while this $2000 laptop is a marvel of engineering, the owner (me) can’t figure out how to cut and paste graphics into my site.  I forgot my mouse and am using the trackpad.   My apologies….

Skipping cool graphics and charts, for now, I am happy to see that May is off to a great start.   The SP 500 is above 1600, and things are looking “up.”    The official TSP monthly returns are in, and the I-Fund knocked it out of the park for April and I-Fund was the best performer for April.  The Year to Date best performer is still the S-Fund, but as the other funds start to demonstrate life and energy, we need to monitor those funds closer.    May got started with C-Fund and S-Fund outperforming I-Fund however.   So the April burst of life for I-Fund may (or may not be…) be an isolated burst of life.

I would like to present the following video, from CNBC, in which NetJets Fractional Jet program is profiled.   In this video, Warren Buffett is interviewed, along with NetJets CEO Jordan Hansell.   While Warren is not really a “stock investor” per se, since he buys entire companies, and turns them around, obviously if Warren talks then it would be probably be smart to listen at least a little bit.  I believe that NetJets is a good barometer for the economy because while many owners are wealthy individuals, who have ownership in NetJet aircraft who travel to Aspen and ski, many are corporations that are “up and coming” and prefer not to use airline travel, but cannot write a check for a $40M Gulfstream.  NetJets bridges the gap and fulfills a corporate/executive travel solution.

It appears that NetJets business is coming back, and this is reflective in my opinion, of the economy.   This is consistent with my own travel observations (I was on the road approximately 200 days in CY 2012), that private aircraft ramps are becoming more crowded and business-oriented hotels such as Marriott and Hilton are seeing less availability of rooms due to increased business travel.  These, too, are reflective of the economy, in my opinion.   Full hotels and lots of private jets at airports are not reflective of a pending recession, I guess that’s my point here.  Lets take a look at the video:     VIDEO LINK

That’s all I have for now, I am 100% S-Fund at the present time.  This may change depending on how the other funds perform this month.

Sorry no cool graphics…..forgot the mouse…..

Thank you for reading

– Bill Pritchard