Gary E. Miller

As we approach the half-way point for the current quarter (was New Year’s Day that long ago?), I wanted to briefly summarize financial market news and our response thereto. Hope was surging along with the market as the books were closed on 2013. As indicated at our client Holiday Luncheon in December and in private conversations with some clients, value investors such as ourselves have been uncomfortable with the dramatic lift off in share prices that manifested itself so widely during the last three months of 2013....

Finally, after thirteen years, the broad U.S. stock indices achieved inflation-adjusted records in 2013. Responsible investors with a functioning memory were unlikely to have participated in the 30% rise of U.S. Equities, because no one in their right mind committed their entire liquid net worth to such a volatile vehicle. For those of us who had a substantial amount in stocks, along with other vehicles, the overall results have been decent, pretty much in line with Trusted Financial’s long-term rate of return.

 The truth about stock ownership is that it has been only a marginally productive endeavor over the past 13 years, once performance is adjusted down for the effects of lost buying power (aka “inflation.”) ...

As the third quarter came to a close, eyes were on Washington as the House of Representatives escalated what has been an annual brawl over the budget into a shutdown of mostly non-essential functions of the Federal Government. Congress has been rehearsing for this Kabuki dance since the last government shutdown in the mid ’90’s. They have made sure to insulate themselves from the most powerful constituencies by exempting Social Security, Medicare, Federal Aviation Administration and National Security related entities from the “shut down.” This keeps most voters from flooding Congress with hate mail for a while, unless they happen to have planned a national park vacation. If predictions that the stand off will continue for weeks is correct, then the buffalo in Yellowstone will be free to roam without those annoying cameras clicking, at least for a while.

Should you be worried? Bullish equity markets are said to "climb a wall of worry."  The media can be reliably counted upon to magnify the crisis du jour, but economic fundamentals trumps temporary crisis in the long-term. I believe there is a good chance that the shutdown and the debt ceiling debate to come will cause a market sell-off. Since Trusted Financial Advisors invests based on long term fundamentals, a healthy sell off will likely be an opportunity to pick up some good merchandise for client portfolios.

The positive fundamentals driving the US equity market at this time are:

Bond and stock markets are having a summer correction, focused on interest sensitive securities. This has occurred against a backdrop of mixed economic news not just in the United States but also in Europe and China. The US economy crawls forward, the Chinese economy is expanding at a slower rate than in recent years. Europe appears to be at the nadir of its recessionary contraction, but there is little prospect of vigorous economic expansion on the continent, which is constrained by stiffening banking regulation and a soggy real estate market. The basket case nations of Europe continue to force the EU central bank to expand its balance sheet, but it does so at a far slower pace than we have seen under the Bernanke Fed in the United States, suggesting prolonged doldrums across the Pond. European nations suffer from greater unemployment than the US because the unemployed are an entitled class in most nations, and laws that give labor extraordinary power discourage new hiring and new enterprise. A spokesperson for the "League of Unemployed" has a solution: cut the official work week from 36 hours to 32 hours so more people will have to be employed. To this group, Karl Marx had an even better solution, except that it failed the last time it was tested, didn’t it?

Since the USA‘s expansion out of the Great Recession may not be gaining speed, investors are, it seems, retreating from the frantic buying that characterized the first quarter of 2013. The damage has been focused on those instruments that attract income investors: bonds, REIT’s and MLP’s. This is because interest rates have been ratcheting upward since the Federal Reserve Chairman suggested it might back off on the extraordinary level of bond purchases known as “quantitative easing” (QE III) that it began about 10 months ago.