Testy Tuesday – S&P 4,200 (again)

4,275.

That's the 50% line from our S&P 2,850 base.  A base which is no longer valid as it doesn't include 0% Interest Rates, lower Corporate Tax Rates or Trillions of Dollars in Stimulus but it also doesn't include the virus – as it's a base we set well before it came about.  So why do we still use it?  Because it's not possible to accurately understand what companies are really making until we are able to strip away the noise but it's going to a very painful band-aid to pull off, that's for sure!  

As you can see from the chart, we're up a whopping 20% since March, when we were at the 30% line so that's a nice move for the month – at this pace we'll be up 80% for the year – nice!  Is that how the markets work though?  Not really.  Usually the go down as well as up but that isn't stopping people from paying 20% more than they paid in March and expecting even more gains to come, is it?

You have to have what they call a willing suspension of disbelief to be bullish at the top of a run like this and yes, I said the same thing in 1998 and the market went up ANOTHER 100% in 1999 and, in retrospect, we knew that was crazy but, while it was going on, people were making millions — before they lost millions, of course.   The trick is to be one of the very fast ones who plays it long and gets out at the tippy tippy top of the market.  I think there were 3 of those guys.  

I feel much like Hamlet trying to navigate the current market.  We have many longs in our Member Portfolios and I do think they are solid but we have done so well in the past year that every day forward seems like an unnecessary risk but, as we've discussed often in the past few years – where else are we going to put our money but the markets?  We can't sit passively by while inflation erodes the buying power of our savings and the interest rates paid by the banks or bonds are a joke as the Dollar collapses before our…
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