Weekly Wrap | The New Year

It's a New Year now and time to start it out with a weekly wrap. As anyone keeping up with the Oracle of Burbank would know, I exited the stock markets in mid-September after the Fed announced QE3, and moved my entire portfolio into cash.

At that time, my intuition told me that the stock markets reached their highs for the year and that I would exit the markets for the rest of the year. As it turned out, my prediction for 2012 market peak was correct. But after the S&P 500 index pulled back around 100 points from it's yearly high, my prediction for more market pain didn't fully materialize.

Little by little, the stock markets absorbed the punishment, avoided the knockout punch, fought back hard, and pulled out a victory at year end as a result of the fiscal cliff being addressed. For the first end of the trading week in 2013, the stock markets reached new heights.

The S&P 500 index closed out this week at 1466, slightly ahead of the mark when I bailed out.



It looks like my original feces thesis that the current administration will do anything to avoid both an economic and market catastrophe is still in effect. So, does this mean that I'm going to jump back into stocks so as to not be "left behind"? Of course not.

There are very little actual market forces at work helping stocks climb back to their pre-recessionary levels. Stocks are at these heights only because of both Federal Reserve and political intervention. The markets are still highly speculative and full of unnecessary risk. So, I'm going to remain in cash.

I'm not competitively playing around with someone else's life savings in order to justify a high fee or to impress someone else. This is MY money. I'd rather be left behind, than to be left holding the bag.