Today October 21, all indexes rallied strongly, in one of the strongest one-day performances I have ever personally seen in many years of trading. NOTE: Some of this “rally” was largely due to one stock, Apple (AAPL), which is NASDAQ’s largest stock, and is found as a holding in just about every mutual fund known to man. The positive mood surrounding Apple trickled into other NASDAQ stocks, thus lifting the index, which is largely tech-company weighted. While AAPL was the main reason the markets went up, I will take rays of sunshine whenever they shine. Airline stocks also rebounded strongly, as the 21-day incubation period of Ebola has passed and nobody else is apparently infected, and the world (for now) is not ending. The ISIS news also seems to have subsided, either due to reduced reporting and/or reduced ISIS activity. Due note that my opinion is the planned interest rate hikes for summer/fall 2015 have not changed, and this may throw some logs into the path of the market as we approach that time frame. However, if we can grab some gains for a few months before then, that would be great.
My desire is to let the week finish out before making new allocation decisions, however those who have been in G-Fund since August (like me), have a full bag of cash, undamaged from recent turmoil, to use in the event we jump back into stock funds. The last few weeks have witnessed multiple, damaging, triple digit down days, and one-day’s performance will not necessarily change the direction of the ocean liner called the stock market, so let’s see how the week plays out- but the markets may be turning upward. I don’t base decisions on one day alone, but make no doubt about it, today was indeed a great day.
Standby to standby for a weekend update.
I remain 100% G-Fund for now.
Thanks everyone – talk to you soon !
– Bill Pritchard
