Structure not stock selection is what counts. I’ve sold down to a 25% long portfolio with the rest mainly in 10-year and 30-year Treasuries. I won’t own high yield corporates because I fear the business cycle leaves them much too vulnerable.  Even more critical is the price-earnings multiplier for the market. We still are in the high teens while growth stocks sell at 1.5 to 2 times market’s valuation. That level of valuation should be reserved for when earnings growth runs in

From experience, any price-earnings ratio over 20 is suspect. During corrections, stocks like Tesla and Google could contract 25 to 30% with no change in their fundamentals. Historically speaking, growth-at-any-price was a disaster in the 1973-’74 market correction based on poor fundamentals for many growth stocks.  Contrapuntally, the art market foolishly gave away the greatest pieces of the centuries as late as the 1950s. Van Gogh’s “Olive Trees” had to be bought in at £4,0

I watched Goldman Sachs shed 69 points, some 8% overnight. Then, there's American Express, normally a polite growth stock among the financials, giving up 26 points, nearly 9 %. All this wipe-out while the S&P 500 Index itself just down fractionally, 0.4% shrinkage. There’s Eli Lilly actually up nearly 30 points or 3%. There was money for oils but financials like Morgan Stanley flopped 7%.  All such bloodletting keeps me invested in the low thirties and I bought more 30-year T

Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is a comparative thing. Booth Tarkington in his classic novel “ The Magnificent Ambersons” posed the idea that to make a fortune while others are losing fortunes is the ultimate success story, bar none.  In reviewing quarterly investment reports from filed 401k’s I keep in mind the name of the game is making money while doing better than everyone else ranging up to trillion dollar money pools that rarely excel, but like “Ole Man River