an tSionna: Post Script.

One final thought on seasonal weakness. It is a well documented phenomena that stocks don't do well in the Autumn. However, this seems to also be the most common concern among the investment class right now. Thus we won't discount the possibility that stocks will do the exact opposite and continue their rally well into year end. Remember the old adage that stocks will do what they have to do to prove the most amount of investors wrong and inflict the most pain. From our perspective the most pain would be a sharp Autumn run up in prices. This could occur because many institutional managers are behind their benchmarks this year and there is something like a trillion dollars sitting in money market accounts earning essentially 0 return for investors. I have heard various estimates on how much money is actually on the sidelines. While the actual number may be up for debate, the number is historically much higher than average. Given this possibility, we prefer the Playbook strategy outlined above. If markets do the opposite of what the crowd thinks then we should be along for the ride. If we do indeed sell off then we have a plan for raising cash per our client risk return requirements.