<p>The iPad is a great product but tech (and the market) looks to the future and Apple hasn’t done anything great in quite a while while GOOG is putting out experiments and ideas and also making incremental improvements.</p>
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<p>I have been looking at this issue as well without much success. I have found CJES and owned it but the stock is not a big mover. There is also SLCA which is a mover but it has a high price.</p>
<p>In what way is slca a high price. Its pe is only 17.6, peg = .37 but it has a beta = 4.23 - maybe a bit too volatile for an aged bloat like me. It has outperformed the s&p enormously over that past 6 months however.</p>
<p>I’m actually looking more for companies doing the fracking not the companies making fracking equipment.</p>
<p>You guys need more people on this thread.</p>
<p>yeah - you’re right. Anybody out there??? Other than that, there is a lot of talk about the dollar - yen trade. Anybody shorting the yen and how are you doing it?</p>
<p>Can’t help you with the yen, but maybe you have some advice for me.</p>
<p>Our retirement portfolio is:
67% stocks/stock funds
17% bonds (inflation protected)
16% cash</p>
<p>Retirement planning says we should be 80% stocks, 20% bonds, no cash. I just can’t bring myself to dump all the cash in stock funds right now, as the market is so high. The cash actually is in a low risk fund that has gotten 5.3%/yr over the last 24 years, not doing as well now, but still pays monthly dividends and it’s 5 yr rate is 3%/yr.</p>
<p>What do you do? Put it all in stock funds right away, do it a little at a time, or wait for the market to crash?</p>
<p>I don’t know but one thing I definitely would never do is get completely out of cash. You should always have some dry powder to take advantage of opportunities as they arise and they always do.</p>
<p>I see what you mean. So I guess we didn’t totally screw up, waiting for the market to crash. And 3% return is better than a money market of 0.1%.</p>
<p>Companies that are engaged in fracking in The Bakken fields include NOG, REN, EOX, KOG.</p>
<p>[Transactions</a> In The Bakken Are Heating Up - Seeking Alpha](<a href=“Transactions In The Bakken Are Heating Up | Seeking Alpha”>Transactions In The Bakken Are Heating Up | Seeking Alpha)</p>
<p>DXJ… if you believe the Nikkei will continue to rise and the yen will continue to fall…</p>
<p>busdriver, did a financial advisor recommend 80/20 allocation? We could never be that aggressive.</p>
<p>I scale in a little at a time to increase the percentage of stocks to cash. It can take a long time in a market like this though.</p>
<p>Another approach would be to buy defensive stocks that aren’t doing that well in the current market.</p>
<p>“DXJ… if you believe the Nikkei will continue to rise and the yen will continue to fall…”</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. I have aaxj which excludes Japan but have recently purchased EWJ which I’ve owned on and off for several years but I like the hedge in DXJ</p>
<p>busdriver, I think your allocation is close enough not to worry about the difference from so-called “ideal”. I can’t quite tell from your post how your “cash” is invested, but it doesn’t sound like cash to me. In the financial crash of 2008/2009 many people, and even corporations, took losses on what they thought was “cash”.</p>
<p>It was the online planner of my retirement fund website that said 80/20 split. They asked how old we were, when we were planning to retire, that kind of thing.</p>
<p>And we don’t buy stocks ourselves, just mutual funds. We have a friend who does invest some of our money in stocks. Every time we personally buy a stock, it crashes, guaranteed. </p>
<p>I guess it’s not really cash, they say it’s:</p>
<p>“Conservative savings option that falls between a money market fund and short-term bond fund. Invests largely in investment contracts backed by high-quality, shorter-term securities. Goal is to maintain the $1 value of its shares, helping to preserve the money you invest. Income has historically been comparable to that of a short-term bond fund. Underlying investments can carry more risks than securities in a typical money market fund.”</p>
<p>But this fund’s lowest rate of return was last year, at 2.37%, and highest 6.15% in 1998. It didn’t go negative during the crash, nor since inception, I believe.</p>
<p>I sent my son a list of benefits questions a few weeks ago because he has a great benefits package that he isn’t really using. So I did some digging and found that he starts out with four weeks of vacation per year (!) and it goes up but I don’t have the schedule of how it goes up and I don’t know the max that he can accrue. We start out new hires with two weeks where I am and the max is about 3.5 weeks. I also wanted him to find out about tuition reimbursement as he is finishing his grad degree and I’ve been trying to get him to do the paperwork for his current course. And I need to get him into a retirement savings program at work because MA takes it and puts it into a black hole if you don’t choose something. So I got the list of funds available to him. It’s a long list. He might have other options too. I get the feeling that young people don’t like to look at benefits stuff until it affects them because there’s adminstration junk to deal with and a lot of unfamiliar stuff to read.</p>
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<p>I think that this is why there are boards where stocks are discussed in a lot of detail - there are careful people out there that want to get a better than even chance at making money both in the short-term and the long-term. I can understand being gun-shy if you’ve had a lot of losses. When I have a large loss or string of losses, sometimes I just get out, take a break and then make some small trades. Sometimes I will get out for a week or two and then get back in. It depends on what happened and how much time and energy I have available. Losses do take a toll on your mental energy.</p>
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<p>I’m usually pretty careful about cash equivalents which is why my cash accounts earn about 1%% (yeah, 1% of 1%) or essentially nothing. I consider Treasuries, platinum, gold and silver bullion, FDIC-insured savings, as cash equivalents.</p>
<p>Getting a good return on something ultra-safe is really hard today.</p>
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<p>I’m pretty sure you’re talking about a stable value fund where my 401k cash is parked right now.</p>
<p><a href=“https://institutional.vanguard.com/VGApp/iip/site/institutional/investments/productoverview?fundId=0339[/url]”>Vanguard - Product detail -;
<p>"Over the last 20 years through December, the average return of all investors in United States stock mutual funds was 4.25 percent, annualized. Over the same period, the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index returned an annualized 8.21 percent. That’s a huge gap — nearly four percentage points a year over two decades.</p>
<p>I ran the numbers. A $10,000 investment at 4.25 percent would be worth $22,989 in 20 years. An investment in the S.& P. 500, at 8.21 percent, would be worth $48,456. The difference is a sobering $25,467.</p>
<p>Why is the gap so wide? One reason is that after fees and expenses, the average mutual fund manager doesn’t beat the overall stock market, as </p>
<p>many studies have shown. But that explains only part of the problem. The rest of it, Mr. Harvey said, is that investors themselves “move their money in and out of the market at the wrong times.”</p>
<p>“They get excited or they panic,” he added. “And they hurt themselves.”</p>
<p>That is a huuuuuuge difference in performance…</p>
<p><a href=“If Stocks Look Irresistible, Don’t Forget to Diversify - The New York Times”>If Stocks Look Irresistible, Don’t Forget to Diversify - The New York Times;
<p>Krlillies, I am not going to worry about you…that fund has a 5 million dollar investment requirement…</p>
<p>I think this is more for the common folks…there is slightly more risk
Vanguard has many choices…</p>
<p><a href=“https://institutional.vanguard.com/VGApp/iip/site/institutional/investments/productoverview?fundId=0132[/url]”>Vanguard - Product detail -;
<p>Schwab did have problems with their short term bond fund during the financial crisis. The fund took a big hit. There was a class action lawsuit and</p>
<p>[Google’s</a> ‘Project Glass’: An Over-Hyped Hobby - Seeking Alpha](<a href=“Google's 'Project Glass': An Over-Hyped Hobby (NASDAQ:GOOG) | Seeking Alpha”>Google's 'Project Glass': An Over-Hyped Hobby (NASDAQ:GOOG) | Seeking Alpha)</p>