Here’s the transcript for Robert Marcin’s stock market Diary for January 6, 2012. You can find Robert live writing about his investments and chatting it up subscribers five days week at WallStreetAllStars.com/marcin.
Bears win today since stocks cant rally on decent Employment numbers, even if a bit funny. Though I still note the relative strength in US stocks vs ROW shares. Euro debt mess not improving, so US getting “safety trade” benefit.
I continue to hold a barbell portfolio, with many aggressive stock positions in cheap small cap cyclicals like aegn, stx, aro, molxa, and kra. But I also hold some dividend names like rdsa, abt, and intc. And I maiantain a fair amount of cash. I have been incorrect so far in expecting a pullback down into the low end of the range by late january. But who knows, that could still occur. Stranger things have happened.
My plan is to buy a dip if we get one in Jan or feb. Plan b has been to sell a rally if we get a strong open to 2012. By march, if market is up 5-10% I will start harvest profits from my long book and reduce my net equity exposure. Heck, if market goes up more than that, I will reload my insignificant short book.
Bulls starting to buy into “self-sustaining” recovery theme. Well, that commentary set the high in 2010 and 2011! By definition, we must set the top on good news, and the recent data would qualify. However, we still have an unsteady global economy with slowing in Asia and recession in Europe. And, we have a 9% of gdp budget busting deficit here, so how “SUSTAINABLE” recovery really is remains to be seen. If we want to be another Japan, I guess we can ignore structural imbalances much longer. However, if not, we must catch up to ROW slowdown. My guess is lag not decoupling, but that call not looking so hot right now.
+1.03%
+0.69%
+4.50%