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Are the tariff wars going to drive me away from equity for the summer period or more?

edited June 2018 in Fund Discussions
Very busy at this house; but take a bit of time to catch this or that for the markets.
The tariff wars (pending or otherwise) are receiving the threats from other countries; as in, "okay, slam a tariff; we'll play the game" and await you "crying uncle".
So, we have Canada, Mexico, EU, India and China as the major announcers OF "tariffs to you", too.
SP-500, to use as a U.S. gauge, is so-so YTD; and one knows a lot of this gain is from the better performing sectors, tech., health, con. discretionary...............so, if these areas start to go to heck; well others suffer, too.

One finds the global today (June 18) not being very happy, not a trend yet, eh?

https://www.barchart.com/etfs-funds/etf-monitor?orderBy=percentChange&orderDir=desc

I'll provide a flash back from 10 years ago (June 16, 2008, Monday).

Our portfolio had its high value point on Oct. 31, 2007 (Halloween Day). International holdings had begun to become more erratic, but most U.S. equity was still fairly happy.
News, data and related going into the end of 2007, especially in Dec. 2007 kept my attention. We watched an erratic equity market for another 6 months; along with the news and data. December of 2007 had very large swings in daily equity.
On June 16, 2008, Monday; we sold 87% of our portfolio.
An existing bond fund holding was kept in place, PTTRX . The equity sells monies were moved into either "stable value" or money market, depending upon the choices at the time. During this period, both stable value and MM were yielding about 5% APR.

With a smile and a head shake I thought about the date this past weekend and being 10 years out from June, 2008.
Currently, we're 51% equity, 95% which is U.S.; all being in tech. and healthcare.
We'll be watching this week more so, as time allows.
Good fortune to all,
Catch

Comments

  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • edited June 2018
    I can’t shine any bright light on this. But just back from few days north of the border. Got an “earful” from some unhappy campers up there. Spoke with one fella in particular whose business exports vehicles to the U.S. - (#@*#*!). Not qualified to analyze all the “Pros” and “Cons” of this issue. Others can do that. But we in Michigan share a common border with our friends to the north. And there’s been some serious deterioration in our two country’s “neighborly relations” (to phrase it delicately).

    To answer the original question: No - The tariff war won’t drive me in any direction. I avoid investing based on macro political considerations. Even macro economic considerations do little to shape my investment decisions. I do, however, vary risk exposure based on perceived valuations and trends (especially trend duration). Both of these have had me relatively conservatively positioned for more than a year now. Nothing’s changed much in that regard.

    A slight change has been to add a couple % to the inflation hedges and cull a couple % out of fixed income over the past 6 months. That’s related to the macro economic aspect - and we’ll see if it pans out. I will say that most income funds are having a rough year. However, the commodity stuff and real estate have been very mixed - nothing to write home about yet.
  • edited June 2018
    More tariff finger pointing to China....
    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/18/trump-says-he-has-asked-ustr-to-identify-200-billion-in-chinese-goods-for-additional-tariffs-at-10-percent-rate.html

    Eventually, all of this tariff stuff is going to drive the equity technicals to a sell; as least for a time period.
    NO/YES???
    Real Time Futures Markets

    ...Which one(s) is going to bite your portfolio in the arse tomorrow???

    Hey, at the very least; we may get a bit of inflation; perhaps that will be the trigger for slowed consumer spending in general. This kind of stuff will get a trend line going, eh?

    As the saying goes; keep your powder dry.

    Good Evening,
    Catch
  • The situation is escalating as investors are pulling money from EM ETFs that have over 30% exposure to China. See Ted's earlier post.
    https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/41758/investors-are-bailing-from-emerging-market-etfs#latest
  • Hi @Sven
    Yes.......emerging markets broadly have been negative since the market whack in late January; with average down of 10-12%. Some U.S. equity sectors continued positive to quasi flat.
  • @catch22, Just about all foreign funds and bonds are down for the year. The US large cap funds are up 3-5% while the smaller caps have done better, presumably their business are more domestically oriented and less impacted by the tariff. At some point, the tariff impact will spread to all supply chain even the smallest caps. This is going to be a tough year.
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