John TC, (partly OT) -- The energy markets have become far too volatile for me to stomach at this point and I have been aggressively selling a lot of my positions in recent weeks, and have done very little buying, comparatively speaking. When we see E&P stocks regularly trading at about triple (or more) the daily % move in the underlying oil & gas commodity prices, it tells me that the market has become too schizophrenic for me. I don't mind a mild degree of schizophrenia (that can actually be good) but when it gets this extreme its too much to take.
I strongly believe that we are seeing energy stocks get hit by a triple whammy of sorts, viz.:
1) Long-time energy investors finally cashing in on multi-year, multi-bagger gains from the energy bull market that has ensued over these last 5 years or so,
2) Sells by folks who bought energy stocks within the last year who are mostly selling for tax reasons, and
3) Short-selling by folks who missed this massive multi-year
energy bull market, who are trying to make the best of a missed call by shorting on the backside of it.
I now am sitting on a ton of cash in both my own and my wife's retirement accounts and, on a net basis, have a very modest amount of net margin debt in my non-retirement accounts, which, together with my home mortgage, is likely to become fully paid off in a matter of months if not weeks. Which finally brings me to the reason I addressed this post to yours -- can anyone offer some good ideas for low-risk income-oriented investments, both in a tax-deferred account and in a taxable account?
I have not really paid much attention to these sorts of investments for many years (in fact it has been decades), and when I started to do some homework on these the other day I was stunned by the plethora of funds, ETF's, etc. out there. I then took out a premium subscription to Morningstar, and that has helped somewhat but I'm still quite bedazzled by all the choices that are out there now. |
