Featured Articles

It has been only 36 hours since we experienced a huge rally in stocks on the back of the positive news out of the Greece 'talks'--Merkel was ready to do a deal of sorts.  Now all parties have walked out of the talks and headed home--no surprise to us at all.  Remember that Greece has until the end of the…

In what is turning out to be the most steady performer of any portfolio we have ever constructed our 2014/2015 Short/Medium Duration Income Portfolio is just shy of a 5% return over 7 months (8.57% annualized).  While we don't believe it will end at the annualized figure we are gaining some confidence that it will reach the initial portfolio yield which was…

The 10 year treasury shot up to near 2.5% this morning, yet stocks have moved higher in a move that reeks of folks 'buying the bottom'.  For us it is a welcome sign--no panic.  Remember that over the last 10 years we have seen time and time again that it isn't necessarily the pure level of interest rates that panics…

It is rather refreshing to observe how equities of all sorts have been reacting to the move up in interest rates--it has been pretty orderly (meaning no major daily tumbles).  We believed that rates would move higher, but as is normal one NEVER knows how stocks (whether it be preferreds, exchange traded debt, REITs or utilities) will react.Now turning to…

As you may recall last week we took a position in Proshares UltraShort SP500 (ticker:SDS) to help cushion our losses in case of a downdraft in equities.  Note that this position was meant to only cushion common stock risk-- and nothing else.  Hedges like this can present problems if one doesn't have a plan of sorts.  If you are hedging…