Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) ❤
No. of Recommendations: 3
The S&P 500 is up 14% from the low on 4/8/2025.
Was that the bottom?
No. of Recommendations: 15
Does anyone else feel like we just got played? I mean, I'm glad it's back but... bit of a rant.
That market mini-crash and recovery was faster than Covid's. A President saying, "don't think I'll do big tariffs? Hold my beer", tanking the markets but then "yeah we'll delay 90 days" creates the biggest 3 week bounce for anyone who had the cohones to buy at the bottom 4/9 and hold.
It's difficult not to be suspicious of this character. Is it skeptical or cynical to think some very big, politically connected boys just made some very big dollars?
Meanwhile, I'm the crazy one for dumping stocks in mid-February as the mechanical signals rolled over and missed most of the big drop... but following those same signals have missed most of this recovery (several back to bullish as of EOD today). Mungo's "blue above red" version of NH/NL killed it - this time.
And it's impossible to predict what is going to be next. "Feels like" continued big volatility ahead. Close to retirement, keeping much more than usual in cash.
/rant
FC
No. of Recommendations: 2
dumping stocks in mid-February as the mechanical signals rolled over and missed most of the big drop... but following those same signals have missed most of this recovery That is exactly what my backtesting shows. See my 4/21/25 post.
https://www.shrewdm.com/MB?pid=621944936Accurate timing improves the volatility and drawdowns while decreasing the overall return.
No. of Recommendations: 2
Accurate timing improves the volatility and drawdowns while decreasing the overall return.
The TPPO method recently started at "Trends and Ranks" helped shift the timing to earlier "in" and earlier "out".
Overall 10yr return improved but is still not better than B&H unless you use much shorter-term PPO.
And of course frequent trading if you allow more than 3 or 4 trades per year.
GD_
No. of Recommendations: 32
The S&P 500 is up 14% from the low on 4/8/2025.
Was that the bottom?
No. Sell everything.
I'm serious, but obviously nobody knows : )
Totally unsupported prediction: Prices will go a little higher and you'll feel a little bad, then they will go a lot lower and you'll feel just fine.
When things get cheap, buy some really good stuff that's on sale. Spend the time between now and then deciding what you'd buy, and at what price.
Then of course things will get cheaper for a while before they rebound, so you'll feel bad again for a little while : )
Net result: "You make most of your money in bear markets, you just don't know it at the time"
Jim
No. of Recommendations: 1
Thanks. I need perspective like this
The S&P 500 is up 14% from the low on 4/8/2025.
Was that the bottom?
-------------------------
No. Sell everything.
I'm serious, but obviously nobody knows : )
Totally unsupported prediction: Prices will go a little higher and you'll feel a little bad, then they will go a lot lower and you'll feel just fine.
When things get cheap, buy some really good stuff that's on sale. Spend the time between now and then deciding what you'd buy, and at what price.
Then of course things will get cheaper for a while before they rebound, so you'll feel bad again for a little while : )
Net result: "You make most of your money in bear markets, you just don't know it at the time"
Jim
No. of Recommendations: 1
The market tends to go up only 6 months into a recession, in anticipation of it coming to an end.
Economists are expecting (65% chance) of a recession by summer (we are 1 quarter into the required definition now),
No. of Recommendations: 10
Even under the optimal scenario of instant replacement of all foreign manufacturing with new US manufactured items, if we totally eliminated the U.S. trade deficit, manufacturing would go from 10% of U.S. GDP to 12.5% — about the same as its share in 2007, and still far less than Germany, Japan, or China.
We are a service economy. That is not going to change no matter how high tariffs are.
The share of GDP that is manufacturing is going down in all rich countries at once. Including in China. And including in France, which has often had a trade surplus.
And real incomes in the US have continued on an upward path and are higher than in other rich countries.
I.e the US is not "being taken advantage of" but benefiting from world trade patterns. Income growth has gone up even as trade deficits went up. And up for the working class. In the last 15 years Americans have moved to better paying service jobs, not shelving at Walmart.
So the main thing for us is surviving the tariff hell and hope Trump and his counterparts will come to their senses and go to free trade to restore prosperity growth.
No. of Recommendations: 3
The Financial Analysts Journal has evaluated Buffett's alpha and concluded (absent his insurance float which we don't have) that the usual factors and betting against high beta and avoiding "junk" explains his alpha and is replicable. So people using mechanical strategies should be able to do well if they don't panic, just as Buffett didn't when he lost 48%.
