Good luck on your journey

Today the Hang Seng is up 4.5% and France/Germany are presently up about 2%. Britain is lagging and only up about 1.1%. It is the first day of the 2009 market and Asia is in the lead from the start as we indicated. The MAD and FAST money advisors all said the USA would lead us out and are predicting as much as a 90% decline this year on top of the 40% decline last year. Last year at this time they were still saying buy and hold. So at least they are consistent in their market timing. We just need to do the opposite it seems.

U.S. stock-index futures currently are positive, indicating the US markets will have a good start for the first day of trading in 2009 after posting the biggest annual decline since the “big D”. Statistically good market years follow poor years and given that the Democrats will be in power by the end of the month the media will by then stop mentioning the “big D” word and will begin attacking anyone who continues to use the “D” word. Obama will say something original to the nation like, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

We want the first day, first week and then January of 2009 to be up markets. Then we want the Obama honeymoon to kick in followed by some evidence that foreclosures are decreasing by mid year. That needs to be done without the appearance that the USA is becoming a socialist country. Home prices are now down about 25% on average which is already about as bad as it was in the early 1990’s and needs to be brought under control first.

Good luck on your journey. Always plan your exit strategy. Always follow your plan and do things with a purpose and do not let the brokers and computers make your decisions with market orders and stops. Once they have you in the computer the traders have it easy sweeping you in and out of the market with just a little volatility. If you do not have time to know what to do then do not do it. Currently high dividend stocks with “safe” balance sheets provide the best return. Next beaten down growth stocks should do best.

I believe one of the reasons Jim Cramer does not have good recommendations is because when he angers people they short his recommendations. So the recommendations go up when the viewers are told to buy and then the traders profit by driving them back down. Therefore we will only discuss world markets and market sectors that should do well. Once a bull market is recognized then 90% of the stocks will do well and everyone will claim to be a star. But we will continue to say what we are doing. The word “sell” is in our vocabulary… and we do it on average about once a year.