Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A Time for Talk and a Time for Action

After much recent agonizing over intra-day market moves, the market finally closed below 1040, which will trigger the stop loss in our portfolios. Yes, it makes us feel like tossing our cookies to sell right here, but we believe it is an important trade from a risk management standpoint.

And as bad as selling feels now, we can feel good about reviewing and re-reviewing the disciplines we follow before making this move. Today we went over about 100 economic data points, and 15-20 technical measures. It is clear from our work that fundamental and technical conditions have continued to deteriorate. What’s not clear yet is whether growth is just slowing or on the verge of contracting. But given escalating risks of more than just a pullback, we feel it’s prudent to run the portfolios with a little less volatility. We have talked for days about our stop point, and how we were giving the market a chance, but with protection. The time for talk is over, and tomorrow we will begin to take action by downshifting some of the risk out of our portfolios.