October 29, 2010

The “Fall Season” has arrived!  I hope you are enjoying the cooler weather.  Those of you who live in the northern parts of the country are probably seeing beautiful leaves on the trees.  These colors are spectacular, but only last a little while and then the leaves fall and someone has to rake them up.  On the other hand, living here in Florida, we enjoy beautiful waterways and gorgeous sunsets year round and I certainly wouldn’t give these up for winter (burr!!!!!!!).

The mid-term elections will be held next Tuesday and the political rhetoric is flying high and getting pretty nasty in some places.  You do not have to look very far to find someone who is willing to tell you whatever you would like to hear (and a great deal that you don’t)!  Of course, reality and truth may well be something else altogether.  Since I take advantage of early voting, I do not have to listen to any of it anymore and can just “tune out” the unpleasant commercials.

For the past month, we have cautiously moved back to a conservative position in stocks as the markets’ wild ride has come back to the positive side;  a condition we expect to last at least until the elections are finalized.  Many of the analysts we utilize believe that – to some extent – our markets are being manipulated (by a number of sources) to keep stock prices rising.  Whatever the cause – as always – we continue to keep a very close eye on these developments and are ready to push the exit button as soon as it appears to be reversing to the downside.  For the past couple of months, we have been gaining ground and I am optimistic we will end this crazy year with a reasonable profit in your portfolio.

On a different note, over the past several years, we have had conversations with many clients concerning friends and family members who might like to utilize our management services.  However, their portfolio did not have sufficient assets to meet our minimum portfolio requirements.  The very active management we provide requires a great deal of constant research and analysis to provide us with the necessary data to be able to make accurate allocation decisions.  These same allocation decisions have allowed us to achieve excellent long-term results for our clients.  As always, I am required to remind you that past performance is no guarantee of future results, which of course you already knew.

It is always difficult to tell someone we cannot help them and hope they can find an advisor that will serve them as I would wish.  I have given much thought and additional research to this problem and I am very pleased to inform you that we have found a managed allocation service that we can utilize for small accounts. It provides a strategic allocation methodology and periodic re-balancing, which will provide an excellent start for these smaller accounts and when they grow larger, we can transfer them to our more active dynamic management services.

I think that this is a “Great” solution for this issue and recommend you pass this information on to your family members and friends and suggest they call me.  As always, I am available to discuss any issues with you personally.  Please, feel free to call me at any time.