Got an email from a Fool pal who asked me why I am out of the market and what I am thinking. Well…theres this:
My Cautious to Ambivalent investing ratio is somewhere around 30/70 just now; Although, - you can’t just ignore/count out the fat rear end laziness factor either; whole stew of stuff going on/boiling away here all appending to the jumbled pile of reasons I have been in no hurry to fill out the roster. Like… what might they be you ask? Well this for example:
- All the questions surrounding the market obsession with AI - some of which I am still in the process of thinking up. See this for pertinent Ai investor FOMO stuff:
- The fact that the market is at all time highs.
Not only that - but to get back to investing/roster plumb I have to do a whole lot of past due research and mental updating - work on firing up the instincts so to speak. So I decided that for now I am best served by just continuing to access my inner investor - Na Na Naaaaaah!!.. in an attempt to just figure out what is what as well as where is where. Sorta like this:
And recently - there is this:
One of the really smarty pants guys I follow came up with this:
"In gross dollars, before inflation, spending in (This) May was essentially the same as it was in (last) September. And that is before any revisions potentially bring it down. To me, the data is literally screaming recession and apparently everyone else pushed the mute button. Maybe I am just crazy wrong, but that just doesn’t happen in a healthy economy. I’ve never seen it happen, I’ve never heard of it happening, and I’ve never heard a theory about how retail spending can simply stop growing and there is no recession.
We live in a country that is propelled by the consumer, and the consumer is in a spot where either they can’t or won’t keep consuming. (I suspect can’t)"
So - I think IF…I say IF there is a recession or even IF odds of a recession are tangibly apparent - then why would I want to pile into a new roster at top of the market prices? I know…I know…but I scare easily. Heck - just the other night I was watching the movie Nesfaratu (sp?) and at a particular scary point had to get up and go check the doors and window even though there haven’t been any reports of vampires in this area for a few months now. Can’t be to careful you know.
Anyway - it’s all part and parcel of the bigger picture which once again circles back to the Cautious/Ambivalent ratio of 30/70 which itself is directly impacted to a substantial degree by the laziness-its-summer-time euphoria I have recently developed. And not only that, but I have re-taken up golf lately and have whacked/hacked great numbers of golf balls into the surrounding woods which the All-Too-Lovely says I should go pick them all up. But there are copperheads about and I don’t see them doing any great harm (The golf balls not the copperheads) and even my longtime retired landscaper said he** no he would’t go traipsing in the woods picking up lost/hidden golf balls.
All the Best,
BDH Investing
Final Note #1: So…
You see - the roster, for what appears to me to be some very good and compelling reasons - is currently in a sort of truncated development and pending firm resolve etc.
Just don’t let them catch you. Seems they think those are theirs. 