I woke up early this morning to catch up on US Feds news. As you know, I am on the other side of the world for a few days and it is about a 12-hour time difference.
Lo and behold, the FOMC raised interest rates by the expected 0.25%, Chair Powell made his hawkish-dovish counter points about the state of the economy, markets rallied because there were no surprises.
Bears are caught in denial and short sellers were left on the wrong side of the trade.
In the recent Twitter Spaces event, I was asked whether markets had bottomed.
Across all my writings for the past 7-8 months, the following has always been my POV:
Based on my macro mapping, I expected markets to bottom towards end Q3 2022 and right enough they did so in mid Oct 2022
I positioned my portfolio to take advantage of this bottom and subsequent rise
I was not trying to exactly time the bottom, but to get as close to it as possible
My year-end portfolio returns reflected the benefits of these moves
My 2023 YTD returns are beating all indexes by more than a mile
If you have been following my 2023 re-positioning series, then you have read my perspective on how markets will behave over the next four quarters.
And thus we find ourselves here today…markets rising, FOMO and greed setting in.
A couple of long-time readers asked me what they should do now. They are sitting in cash and were wondering if this is a good time to jump back into the markets.
Unfortunately, I am not a financial planner and cannot give you investing advice. I can only tell you what Beachman is doing….