The Cycle

Time to pull this one out of the closet and dust it off. Notice, however, that there is no timeline on the vertical axis, so we may have our patience tried while we wait out the current situation.

I think the best I have read recently is an opinion piece by Barry Ritholz on  Bloomberg titled "Some Rules For Coping With Stock Market Panic". I would highly recommend giving it a quick read (just click on the highlighted title).

"People don't like being told what to do, and when agitated they really dislike being told to be less agitated. So rather than just tell you not to panic (seriously, DON'T PANIC), I will offer some thoughts about what is going on today, this week and perhaps the next quarter or two... and it's worth being skeptical of anyone who says they know how this will turn out".

For the last 11 years or so of the bull market in stocks we have been told that "passive" portfolio management was best. We are not always active (trading day in and day out), weeks or months may go by with little or no trading activity, but since somewhere in the middle of 2018 we have been reluctant to spend our and our High Rock Private Clients hard earned $ on over-priced equity assets, despite a good deal of folks disparaging our cautious stance. We did continue to look for value and opportunity where we believed it existed, but it certainly was not in being fully invested in passive equity index ETF's. We were partially invested, we did not miss out on the upside completely.

We are certainly not sitting on our hands at this time, either, as we scour the markets, patiently looking for value opportunities to arise, without gambling away our or our client's money. It certainly is nice to have the cash on hand to be able to do so.

Most of the calls I am taking this week are from clients thanking me for our patience, our diligence, our caution and our stewardship. Imagine that?