Are you people so starved for something to read that you have to visit HERE? To what *I* write? :) Wow. I am humbled.
I do have some thoughts on what is going on. Very dangerous times methinks. I do not see the open ended promises of continuous market injections by Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve as a long term good. Do I see it as inflationary? Well we've posted on that before. In my opinion it will take years for substantial inflation to appear in the economy. Too many deflationary forces in place. Is it destabilizing though? You betcha. Junior was just handed a set of keys to the car and only has a learner's permit. I think it was absolutely the wrong signal to give market participants. Will it help the economy? I don't think that QE1 or QE2 helped the economy in any material way and neither will this. Will it help the stock market? In the short term. Maybe even *very* short term. It's clear from my models that these actions are having smaller and shorter effects.
As a planner how does one advise his clients? Again, in the short term I think the chances of a market advance are not insignificant. But less so than the first two rounds of Quantitative Easing. Maybe as little as 55/45. If invested, I'd have two hands on the wheel. If not invested in stocks, I'd find something cheap to invest in. Hedged equities. A cash plus strategy. Certain balanced risk strategies (risk parity), although those will fail too if correlations go to one again (like 2008). Good luck!
