Tag Archives: Market

Short Term Bond Fund VFSTX

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Here we took a look at one of Vanguard Bond Funds: VFSTX. Yield 4.41%; YTD return 10%; investment grade corporate bonds; average maturity 2.6 yr.

It suffered a 10% drop in price in 2008. The actual return was -5%, which was big in short term investment grade bond fund.

What was the cause of that big drop? Client redemption? Maybe considering credit crisis occurred last year. A few bond holdings went under? Maybe too. Had it owned Lehman Brother, for example.

It’s quite interesting that it has a unusual V-shape recovery after the drop. Obviously the relative higher yield has been attracting a lot of investors looking for better returns on their short term investment. Has it also attracted a lot of people who are basically using it as money market funds? Maybe.

Another reason for the recovery might be the valuation of its certain holdings has recovered since the credit crisis.

For comparison, here’s Fidelity FBNDX chart, which showed similar drop last year.

If you have owned similar fund, you probably want to pay closer attention to its price movement.

Dow Jones Broke Down

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Dow Jones Industrial has broken its major support around 8000. There’s no clear support but some round number at 7000 or 6000. 5600 is a support.

Where will the market go from here? Not sure but we can try to read the market and right now it’s going south.

Is the worst over yet?

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Dow Jones Industrial Average has been up and down for the past many weeks but it appears that it has moved towards sideways. As recession has been officially announced and confirmed, how much has the market priced in all the bad news?

Certainly investors are looking for values after significant drops, but it’s not clear that if it will range bound between somewhere below 8000 and somewhere above 9000.

If it builds a long base above 8000 and consolidates the base, we may see more upside but we need to see the confirmation.

Dow Jones Industrial Average Is Walking Out Its Downtrend

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It closed up today and the week so it’s following through the big shoot up the other day. As we can see that on the daily chart, it’s in short-term over bought condition now. It’s slowly walking out the downtrend line, but we should be cautious as the volume was not confirming.

If you have significant equity positions in your portfolio, any rally into 9,500-10,000 zone can be your opportunity to lighten up and preserve your capital during this bear market.

Crash tomorrow???

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US market was closed due to the MLK holiday but the other markets in the world had closed down a lot from 5 to 7%. Asia markets are down more than 5% the second day. How will the US market react? Unless it’s prolong decline, it might be a buying opportunity. But be carefuly the old saying “don’t catch the falling knife!”.

Dow Jones Industrial will break the 12,000 support for sure. Next support is 11,500.

Be careful tomorrow!