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There are mirror websites at http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org,
http://www.geocities.com/rnseitz,
and
http://www.geocities,com/ultrahiiq
Tuesday,
May 7, 2013:
Sad to say, the computer ate today's investment commentary and
it's too late to redo it all. I'll have to skip a day, and pick it
up tomorrow.
NEW!!
Sunday, April 7, 2013: As
an update to what I wrote last November, the trailing P/E ratio on
the S&P 500 is around 18. (It's long-term average has been
about 15.)
Its normal upper limit is 20-to-25, so it's fully priced but not
yet overpriced. It would have to drop to 10 or below to constitute
a secular (super-) bear market bottom. Here's a chart
that gives a decent picture of the S&P 500's history from four
years after its inception in 1871 until the chart's 2005 closing
date.
I'm working on an update to this topic of
secular bull markets and secular bear markets, but I'm not quite
through with it yet.
In my opinion, the equity markets are not
"asset bubbles" at this time.
Tuesday,
November 27, 2012: Here's
a first and second
installment in a discussion of some investment options.
Sunday,
November 25, 2012: On
the basis of new information, I'm going to have to change some of
the material I posted on Friday (below). I'm going to change the
peak P/E (Price-to-Earnings) ratio in 1999 from 38:1 to 34:1.
Further, the S&P 500 index has only now deflated to the top
of its normal range. If the past can be used to guide the
present, we could be typically looking at another 16 years--2028--before
the S&P 500 falls to a secular bear market bottom, and then
begins to re-inflate!
During this entire period,
"buy-and-hold" is a money-losing strategy.
There's one domestic mutual fund that has
returned more than 15% a year over the past 10 years: the Fidelity
Leveraged Company Stock Fund. This was a favorite of mine in
2007, and I had some money invested in it, but it was hit so hard
by the 2008 downturn that I cashed out of it. It's a wild ride
(it's a Morningstar three-star fund), but it's done better than
most domestic funds. However...(1) most of its gains were
made during its early years when the markets were rebounding
from the 2002-2003 bear market, and (2) U. S. market indices are
now near the seasonably favorable tops of their ranges, poised to
decline sometime in the next six months. A better measure of their
prowess are their five-year track records, which are measured from
their 2007 bull market peaks.
On the other hand, our previous four-year
market cycles have been predicated upon the Fed's manipulation of
credit markets in order to fight either inflation or unemployment,
and this time, the Fed's hands are tied, so maybe we won't have
typical post-election market declines.
Fortunately, there are alternative strategies
that ought to work... emerging market mutual funds, commodity
funds, real estate funds, the AAII stock screen portfolios, and
the TopStock market timing service, to name a few. These have
their pros and cons.
Friday,
November 23, 2012: I'm
getting ready to revamp this website in ways that I hope will
offer more personal benefit than what I've been posting in the
past. Like what? Well, over the past year-and-a-half, I've been
investigating exotic, "bleeding-edge" anti-aging
therapies. Some examples are Life Code's "Stem Cell
100", TA Sciences' TA (Telomerase Activator)-65, buckyballs
in olive oil, the Life Extension Foundation's "Calorie
Restriction Mimetic", modest calorie restriction, PQQ (PyroloQuinoline
Quinone) and other esoterica. Are they working? That's hard to
tell, but maybe so.
A related topic is health maintenance.
Another is investment and the economy. Right
now, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite are lower than they
were 13 years ago in 1999. But in 1999, the S&P 500 hit a P/E
ratio of 38:1... quite a bit higher than it had ever been
throughout its previous history. Similarly, the Nasdaq topped out
at 5,500 compared to its current readings of around 3000. Over the
past 13 years, the markets have been working off this
once-in-two-centuries excess. The P/E ratio for the S&P 500 is
currently around 16:1... reasonable but not cheap. In the
meantime, we're ostensibly in a secular bear market that's due to
end in the 2016-2018 time frame at P/E ratios substantially lower
than they are now.
I'm working on writing this up, but it may take a
little longer.
In a lighter note, with Christmas vacation only
four weeks away, here's a site that offers vacation packages for
Disneyworld: Flying Elephant Vacations | Experience the Pachyderm Difference!
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The American Association of Individual
Investors (AAII) has stock screens (portfolios) that promise
extraordinary long-term returns. I had thought about recommending
this as a viable investment strategy, but the markets have been so
chaotic that I haven't followed up on this. Here's a discussion
of some to the AAII stock screen performance claims.
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Wednesday, I wrote this discussion
of two current views of intelligence.
Sunday, I
probed others' experiences with the dual n-back program, as
well as running it for myself.
Switching now to more frivolous topics, this
business of "brain boosting" seems to me to have
repercussions well beyond "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's
the smartest one of all?" This would seem to me to be of
importance to everyone who plans to grow old... to age-related
cognitive decline, and to the avoidance of Alzheimer's Disease,
not only for ourselves but also for those we love.
This could be game-changing.
(1) My own
personal story (Updated) .
(2) The
Flynn Effect and Age-Related Cognitive Decline
(3) Brain
Boosting: Quo Vadis, Dominie?
(4) Preliminary
Results of My "Brain-Boosting" Experiment (Sunday
Update)
(5) the first example of one of these lists is
a set of 153 cancer prevention news articles dealing with the
relationship between food, herbs, etc., and cancer. It may be
found here.
(6) A general listing and discussion of some
putatively beneficial nutritional foods, spices, and supplements
is given here. Entire
books have been written regarding each of the items set forth in
this list. I plan to expand upon this material, but this gives a
skeletal outline of foods, and food-derived extracts that I try to
consume. (What's needed most is a presentation of what these
"nutriceuticals" have done for some of us and might do
for you.)
There should be a lot happening on this website
over the next few days and weeks, given time to report on these
topics.
2013-5-24: (Friday Night):
Today's
Investment Commentary
Given the grave concerns about our current
economic crisis, I'm going to try to address, as best I can, some
problems and concerns that we might be sharing about this subject.
Links
to Daily Investments Interpretations (Individual Dates)
First-Half,
2012
Second-Half,
2011
First-Half,
2011
Second-Half,
2010
First-Half,
2010
Second-Half,
2009
First-Half,
2009
Second-Half,
2008
First-Half, 2008
Daily
Investment InterpretationsArchive
July 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011
January 1, 2011 to July 30, 2011
July 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010
January 1, 2010 to July 30, 2010
July 1, 2009 to December 31, 2009
January 1, 2009 to June 30, 2009
July
1, 2008, to December 31, 2008
May
7, 2008, to June 30, 2008
11/12/2008:
The stunning implications of the fact that we're, perhaps, in a
super-bear market are only now penetrating my skull.
A Buy-and-Hold Strategy Applied from
the Start to the Finish of a Super-Bear Market (e. g. 2000 to
2018, Assuming That This Concept Is Valid) Would Typically Lead to
60% to 65% Losses Over the 17-18-Year Period After Correcting for
Inflation and Adding in Dividends!
Over the course of a (typical?) 17-to-18-year
long
super- bear market, the value of an S&P 500 index fund, after
correcting for inflation and adding in dividends, typically
drops to 1/3rd of its value from the
beginning to the end of the 16-year secular (super-) bear
market period. In talking about a "typical" super-cycle,
I need to mention that these super-cycles are inferred from the
chart pattern of the S&P 500 from 1871 to the present. Over
that time span, there have been 3 super-cycles and, it would
appear, part of a fourth, from 2000 to the present time... if, in
fact, these super-cycles are real enough to have predictive value.
But no two of these super-cycles have been just alike.
("History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."?) You
might take a look at the above-linked chart
displaying the S&P 500 from 1871 to 1997 and see what you
think.
Where We Stand Right Now, and Where We
Might Go from Here:
So far, money invested in an
S&P500 index fund in March, 2000, has fallen
by now, after correcting for inflation and adding in dividends, to about ½ of what it was worth in March, 2000.
However, because the S&P 500 was overpriced by... 65%?... in
March, 2000 (by far the most overpriced it's ever been), then if
we are in a super-bear market, this money in 2018 should be worth
about 40% what it is now. In other words, money
invested in a buy-and-hold S&P 500 index fund in March, 2000,
should be worth, in 2018, only about 1/5th what it was when it was
invested in 2000!
A Buy-and-Hold Strategy During a
Super-Bull Market Yields Dramatic Gains
(b) All of the long-term gains registered
by buy-and-hold investors occur within super-bull markets, and
they're sufficient to overpower the fall of the price of equities,
in real value, to 1/3rd of their previous highs, plus the average
6.8% a year that Dr. Jeremy Siegel has found for the long term
average rate of return of the U. S. stock market from 1802 through
2004. This points to a staggering
conclusion: our best stock market strategy would be to sell our
stocks at the beginning of a super-bear market, and to avoid stock
investments for the next 16-to-18 years until the beginning of the
next super-bull market. So how many individuals and
companies that make money by selling investment services do you
think are willing to tell their customers to avoid the stock
market for 16-to-18 years at a stretch? Yeah, that's the same
number I came up with, too.
But... We're in Uncharted Territory
Because we're in uncharted territory,
experiencing the first deflation since the Great Depression, the
markets could go lower than usual, although we might expect them
to return to their hypothetical trend lines by 2018 (no
guarantees, of course).
These Speculative Predictions and
Interpretations Apply Only the the U. S. Stock Market
These predictions, if they unfold as
they have in the past, apply only to the U. S. stock market. I
have no data concerning non-U. S. markets (although non-U. S.
markets have a habit of moving more-or-less in lock-step with the
U. S. stock market). I'm particularly hopeful that the Chinese and
Indian stock markets may decouple from the U. S. market over
the coming years.
11/9/2008:
Over the weekend, I've re-examined the subject of super-bull
markets and super-bear markets, and I don't like what I've
found. Of course, there's nothing that says things have to work
out this way, but the numbers are suggesting a super-bear market
bottom in 2018 that would be 55% to 65% below where the popular
indices stand today even if our current malaise turns out to be a
standard, garden-variety recession, with a cyclical bull market
starting up again in 2009 or 2010.
A buy-and-hold strategy in most mutual funds in
such a scenario would be a disaster, although there may be a few
funds that can outperform the market sufficiently that you'd come
out well ahead even if the blue-chip index funds lose 2/3rds of
their purchasing power. The above-linked write-up will explain.
11/2/2008 Important (Second) Update: This "recession" is
categorically different in cause
and consequences than any of the normal recessions we've
experienced over the past 60 years.
Unlike all the other recessions since World War II, this recession
(Depression?) is deflationary, driven by a credit crisis, rather
than a result of the Federal Reserve Board's overshooting its mark
in its efforts to slow the economy in order to rein in inflation.
This may be "The Perfect Storm".
6/7/2008:
As many of us are probably aware, there are now techniques that
seem to subtract 15 or more years off our biological ages. It will
be decades before such results can be verified through
large-scale, long-term studies, but some of us are availing
ourselves of these "bleeding edge" stratagems, with
dramatic improvements in such ponderable parameters as blood lipid
profiles, fasting glucose and insulin sensitivity levels, and
related health measures. Along with living
longer (and, in fact, these disease reductions are prerequisites
to living better longer) are techniques for putatively
reducing the risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's
disease, Parkinson's disease, and Type 2 diabetes. Again, there
are no guarantees. It will take decades of large-scale, long-term,
placebo-controlled studies to validate the various pilot studies
that have been conducted to date... studies that are concerned
with special nutritional and supplement interventions that don't
involve patentable drugs. Still there's compelling evidence that
some of these maneuvers really do work. For example, As an
example, four years ago, I was going to my dermatologist every
three months to have actinic keratoses--sunlight-induced,
pre-cancerous lesions--frozen off the top of my head. After I began
drinking green tea four years ago, these lesions disappeared and
have never returned--in keeping with numerous studies showing that
green tea fights skin cancer. Other members of the Calorie
Restriction Society have had a similar experience. This is
certainly anecdotal, but nevertheless, this is what's
happened.
Another example of startling discoveries that,
to my knowledge, haven't made it into widespread public view is
Harvard Medical School researcher Dr. Norman Hollenberg's
discovery that the Kuna Indians, who live on a relatively isolated
group of islands off the Caribbean coast of Panama, have 1/10th
(that's 10%!) of the age-adjusted rates of heart attacks,
strokes, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer than do their
North American counterparts. (See this
for diabetes.) The key to this seems to lie in their drinking 3 to
5 cups a day of "raw"
hot chocolate. (The crucial ingredient seems to be epicatechin.).
These dramatic reductions in degenerative diseases aren't
attributable to genetic inbreeding, because Kuna Indians who move
to the mainland and adopt mainland diets suffer the same ills that
plague the rest of us. (You can buy this unprocessed cocoa at
outlets like iHerb.)
Because this is more potent than resveratrol,
I'm wondering what effect this has upon aging and life
expectancies.
In the meantime, here's an article
about aging interventions that I wrote in 2006 but never
published.
5/6/2008: I
Goof Up: Last fall, on the 21st of
September, I declaimed that "My personal guess is that the
stock market is going to recover from its deep, steep dip and
climb higher (with some ups and downs) for the remainder of the
year. I'm also speculating", quoth I, "that we won't go
into a recession before 2009, after the 2008 presidential
election."
Boy, was I wrong! Actually, the stock market
continued to rise to new heights, peaking on October 11th. But
then it did the unthinkable: it plummeted to new lows--like two
tornadoes howling down the same path.
Having lost all of my own August-to-October
ill-gotten gains and a bit more besides, I'm going to try prognosticating
again, along with some ideas about investments. (This will be
changing rapidly over the next few days, so you may want to check
back again.)
Here is an article
I published in the March issue of "Gift of Fire"
reviewing recent articles and books that discuss psychopaths.
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