Thoughts On: Uses of Cash in the Portfolio
Should we go to cash? Why cash? Periodically, clients ask if we should “go to cash” with their portfolios. They never ask this question while stock prices are going up, but only when prices have been coming down. This is due to the human tendency to buy at the top and sell at the bottom, which is a bad tendency. To combat this tendency, I want to look closer at the role of cash in an investment portfolio. An investment portfolio has at least a five-year time horizon; it is NOT short-term spending money. Short-term spending money belongs in cash [...]
Looking Toward 2025
Here’s a quick update on what we’re paying attention to as we come to the end of 2024: Markets Stocks: The market overall is expensive on almost all common metrics: market cap to GDP, price to sales, etc. We are very wary of the most popular, most expensive stocks that have done so well lately. A handful of VERY pricey tech stocks are driving the DOW, S&P500, and NASDAQ, Bond: The bond bull market ended in 2020 after almost 40 years. Long rates have risen for almost 4 years now, and bond prices have been DOWN for 4 years in [...]