May 26, 2017
By Steve Blumenthal
“If you make an investment and feel good about it, you’ll lose money.
If you make an investment and you don’t feel good about it, you’ll make money.
Go shopping when things are on sale.”
– Mark Yusko, Morgan Creek Capital Management
2017 Strategic Investment Conference
“Forget Trump! What is the Fed’s reaction function?
The Fed is the elephant in the room and they are always the elephant in the room.”
– David Rosenberg, Gluskin Sheff
2017 Strategic Investment Conference
Mark Yusko is founder and CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management and former chief investment officer of the University of North Carolina’s endowment. He set the stage for an outstanding last day at the 2017 Strategic Investment Conference in Orlando. I’ve quoted him often in past letters. He’s sharp, quick and a seasoned (smart) investor.
Over the next two to three weeks, I’m going to share with you my high level notes of the conference and some investment ideas (e.g., India looks great). There was bullish discussion on China and emerging markets, but the developed markets are a different story. The Fed and central bankers must remain on our radars.
Here are our three main takeaways from the SIC 2017:
- Economic Power Shifts from West to East: India and China’s share of world GDP has increased six-fold since 1970. Meanwhile, the G7 nations’ share of global trade has declined from 50% to 30%. This shift in economic power presents one of the greatest investment opportunities in history… and also carries many risks.
- Demographics are Destiny: Populations in the West are aging rapidly. In the US alone, 10,000 people turn 65 every day… and will do so for the next dozen years. An aging population means less economic activity, which has profound implications for your portfolio.
- The Coming Technological Revolution will Change the World: Over one-third of US jobs are expected to be automated over the next decade. But automation and advances in technology aren’t just affecting manufacturing workers—they will impact your future investment success.
There was consensus around what John Mauldin is calling “The Great Reset.” Those nagging bubbles: debt and entitlement promises. The demographic needs simply don’t square with the promises made. The math won’t work.
Ideas were shared as to possible solutions. And there are solutions. So it doesn’t mean we have to face another crisis; however, it’s my view that it will likely take a crisis to bring political leadership together. Just saying.
David Zervos, Ph.D. from Jefferies spoke of a debt jubilee, saying “People don’t understand that when you have big slugs of debt that sit over an economy, it suffocates the economy.” Mauldin believes we (the developed countries) will all hold hands and jump together. Essentially monetizing our debts (print buy and burn it). Essentially a debt jubilee with each country keeping tight bands around their currency. Referencing the enormous fire that destroyed the House of Parliament in 1834, Yusko said we will “burn the tally sticks.”
I wrote last week, Ray Dalio said “The Near Term Looks Good, The Long Term Looks Scary.” The good news is you and I are going to get through it. It will require good offense and great defense to be in a position to take advantage of the buying opportunity that the next bear market will create.
Over the next few days, I will receive the audio files and copies of all the presentation slide decks. I’m a chart guy and there were some great charts. I’ve taken so many notes and want to make sure I share them with you in a concise and clear way.
What I like most about Mauldin’s conference is polite confrontations that occur when the presenters get together on stage. Talk about stress testing amongst and in front of a very smart group of individuals. For example, geopolitical analyst George Friedman sees a 70% chance we strike North Korea by early June. Yikes! The other three geopolitical strategists disagreed.
George cited pre-war-like military build-up, F-35 fighter activity and Chinese movement along the border. Dr. Pippa Malmgren was outstanding as was her father, Dr. Harald Malmgren. He is a scholar, a former ambassador, international negotiator and senior aide to Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. This man is on the inside and his insights were helpful. The Malmgrens, along with geopolitical strategist Ian Bremmer, had a softer view on North Korea. They believe the US may be working with China to assist them in taking care of the “thorn” in their (and our collective) side. Keep this on your radar. More notes to follow.
Mauldin’s presentation was outstanding. He wrote last week about what he is calling “The Great Reset.” It was much of that content he shared in his closing presentation and concluded with ideas on how to invest in the period ahead. So let’s start there today and set the stage for what will be a series of letters (my notes) over the coming weeks.
As a quick aside, my Orlando plane home to Philly was diverted to Pittsburgh. It was bumpy and the storm was severe. Let’s just say I’m happy to be in Pittsburgh. No favorite writing chair this morning, no beautiful Susan next to me and no yummy coffee, but hey, it’s great to be alive. Grab a coffee and read on. Mauldin presents a strong case.
I hope you find On My Radar helpful for you and your work with your clients. And please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.
♦ If you are not signed up to receive my weekly On My Radar e-newsletter, you can subscribe here. ♦
Included in this week’s On My Radar:
- The Great Reset: How Should We Then Invest? By John Mauldin
- Trade Signals — Don’t Fight the Tape or the Fed
- Personal Note — Almost June
The Great Reset: How Should We Then Invest? By John Mauldin
“A speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware,
and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.”
– John Maynard Keynes
“The biggest mistake investors make is to believe that what happened in the recent past is likely to persist.
They assume that something that was a good investment in the recent past is still a good investment.
Typically, high past returns simply imply that an asset has become more expensive and is a poorer, not better, investment.”
– Ray Dalio
This letter and next week’s will be two of the most important I’ve ever written. They will set out my philosophy about how we have to invest in the coming days and years. They are the result of my years of actually working with clients and money managers and thinking about the economic and particularly the macroeconomic world. Because of some of the developments I will be discussing, I think the future is likely to be extremely challenging for traditional portfolio allocation models. The letters also discuss my thinking on new developments in markets that allow us to more quickly adapt to our ever-shifting environment, even when we don’t know in advance what that environment will be. I hope you find the letters helpful.
Longtime readers know that this letter tends to talk more about our global economy’s problems than about its positive opportunities. That’s not to say that I ignore the opportunities. In fact, about half of my next book will focus on the tremendous potential I see developing over the next 20 years.
I am extraordinarily optimistic about the “human experiment” as we move deeper into this century. I foresee more of the world lifted out of poverty and afforded more of the necessities and even the luxuries of life, a much cleaner environment, steadily decreasing warfare, and healthcare radically altered in a positive manner. I truly believe most of us will live much longer than we currently imagine. In the not-too-distant future we will conquer many of the diseases that cut life so tragically short. Given this view, how is it possible to not be optimistic?
But other less benevolent trends cast deep shadows on that positive outlook. I think we are rapidly coming to the point where there is no simple way to avoid them. Much of our comfortable society is going to be radically altered, bringing new expectations and frustrations. Unfortunately, these trends will have an enormous impact on our investments. As I travel around the country, I am often asked after my speeches or at dinner, “John, I have the same concerns. But what do I do about my investments, my family– especially my children – and my business?”
I will admit my answers have often been personally unsatisfactory, at least with regard to investing, which is my “day job.” Many potential solutions are not available to the average person or don’t address the total problem.
I have spent the better part of four years – and in some ways the last 35+ years of my financial industry career – looking for those answers and trying to come up with an approach that not only makes sense but that also has a broader reach – an answer not designed just for a few high-end investors in one particular country but something that could eventually be available and useful to everyone, everywhere.
Finding the answer hasn’t been easy, because all the apparent “best solutions” seem to have market and regulatory issues. Some are only available to certain sets of investors or bring other problems along with them. Some of the things I wanted to do weren’t even technologically possible four or five years ago. But the markets and technology have evolved (rapidly!) to make it possible to now approach our portfolios in a systematic way that allows us to counter negative trends.
This letter will cover the philosophical underpinnings of my thinking. I’ll also introduce some investment tools (which I will give you access to through a link later on in the letter) that express that philosophy, but you could also design a different answer that fits your own (or your client’s) portfolio construction.
First, let me quickly review the investing challenges as I see them. First, there is the massive imbalance between the debts governments owe and the promises governments have made, sure to cause enormous market turmoil, the timing of which will be somewhat unpredictable.
Second, there has been a common misperception of critical points that Harry Markowitz made in his 1952 graduate student paper that eventually became his 1990-Nobel prize-winning work that we now call Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). We have followed an interpretation of MPT that in my opinion could cause great damage to the returns and retirement lives of investors. We need to update our thinking to incorporate what I think of as MPT 2.0. Premature optimization is a major portfolio problem.
Third, we must understand that the underlying core investments in most portfolios are undergoing radical changes, which makes any backward-looking portfolio model essentially worthless. I can truly assert that the standard investment line that “Past performance is not indicative of future results” has never been truer than it is today.
Further, the way we determine relative value within an asset class (especially equities) is being short-circuited in a way that could seriously impair traditional active asset management.
And yet we can’t retreat from the market. The only way we can grow our portfolios and income, other than by being involved in our own businesses, is by saving and investing our earnings. But as I’ll describe below, markets will be volatile at best and destructive at worst. So how do we stay in the market yet avoid negative outcomes? How do we use “MPT 2.0” to diversify among asset classes and smooth out long-term returns in our portfolios when, if I am right, all that diversification may simply diversify our losses?
That is what I have been deeply wrestling with for the last four years. I can see this train coming, and I want to get on it, not be run over by it. I am afraid most people will be run over it before they eventually climb on board, but with their assets much reduced. They will suffer this fate because they believe the future will play out like the past.
We need, instead, to restructure our portfolios to make sure we get as much of our wealth as we possibly can to the “other side” of the coming crisis, because afterward, I believe, we will see the greatest bull market of our lives. We just have to get there with our assets intact.
Let me offer the usual caveat/warning: This is my personal opinion based on my own analysis. There is no guarantee that I’m right. We are talking about an unknowable future. Many knowledgeable investment professionals will strongly disagree with me.
That said, you and I have to decide how we will approach that future. These are my thoughts, so let’s dive in.
The Great Reset
We are coming to a period I call the Great Reset. As it hits, we will have to deal, one way or another, with the largest twin bubbles in the history of the world: global debt, especially government debt, and the even larger bubble of government promises. We are talking about debt and unfunded promises to the tune of multiple hundreds of trillions of dollars – vastly larger than global GDP. We are also going to have to restructure our economies and in particular how we approach employment because of the massive technological transformation that is taking place. But let’s keep the focus for now on global debt and government promises.
All that debt cannot be repaid under current arrangements, nor can those promises ultimately be kept. There is simply not enough money and not enough growth, and these bubbles are continuing to grow. At some point, we’re going to have to deal with these issues and restructure everything.
Now, people have been saying that for years. Remember Ross Perot and his charts in the early 1990s? We’ve all heard the doom and gloom predictions of the demise of civilization that will be brought on by our Social Security and/or healthcare and/or pension problems.
And yet, these are real problems we must face. Facing them won’t be the end of the world, but it will mean we must forge a different social contract and make changes to taxes and the economy. That said, the day of reckoning is not here yet. We have time to adjust and prepare. But I believe that within the next 5–10 years we have to confront the ending of the debt and government promises supercycle that has been developing since the late 1930s. This is a global problem, but it will be felt most acutely in the developed world and China. The developing and frontier markets will be radically affected as well, but mostly by fallout from the impacts on the developed world.
There has been no instance in history when too much debt didn’t eventually have to be dealt with. The even more massive bubble of government promises will have to be dealt with, too. We need some realistic way to decide how to meet those promises, or at least the portion of them that can be met.
For the record, what I mean by government promises are pensions and healthcare benefits in all their myriad varieties. Governments everywhere guaranteed these benefits assuming that taxes would cover their immediate costs and future politicians would figure out the rest. Now the time is rapidly approaching when those “future politicians” are the ones we elect in the here and now.
What Happened to Deleveraging?
Typically, after a significant recession there is a deleveraging of society. That’s certainly what many expected in 2009. Individuals in some countries did in fact reduce their debts, but not governments and corporations, or most individuals outside the US.
That the world is awash in debt is not exactly news. As of 2014, total global debt had risen to $199 trillion, growing some $57 trillion in just the previous seven years, about $8 trillion a year. The McKinsey Institute chart below shows 22 advanced and 25 developing countries that make up the bulk of the world economy. The chart illustrates how the debt is split among household, corporate, government, and financial sectors:
The debt-to-GDP ratio increased in all advanced economies from 2007 through 2014, and the trend is continuing. Here’s a chart for the advanced and developing economies:
Since that 2014 report was published, global debt rose by $17 trillion through 3Q 2016. In fact, in the first nine months of 2016 global debt rose $11 trillion! After averaging a little over $8 trillion from 2007 through 2014, global debt growth is now accelerating. Global debt-to-GDP is now 325%, though it varies sharply by region and country.
More worrisome is that interest rates are slowly rising pretty much everywhere, so debt-servicing costs are rising, too. In the US, according to a note sent to me recently by my friend Terry Savage,
Interest on the national debt is the third largest component of our annual Federal budget – after social programs and military spending. In the most recent fiscal year, we paid $240 billion in interest on the national debt. That was a relatively low cost, because the Fed has kept interest rates artificially low for years – as savers can attest.
Now, with the Fed hiking rates, interest costs are set to soar. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that every percentage point hike in rates will cost $1.6 trillion over the next ten years! And that’s without adding to the debt itself every year, by running budget deficits.
That 1% rate hike will take roughly an additional 3% of our current tax revenues every year. Governments must cover higher interest costs with additional taxes, lower spending, or an increase in the deficit (which means more total debt and even more interest rate cost). Of course, higher interest rates affect more than just government interest rates. Many of us have adjustable-rate mortgages and other loans with floating interest rates.
It is not just the US that faces a serious debt problem. Global GDP is roughly $80 trillion. If interest rates were to rise just 1% on our global debt, an additional $2 trillion of that GDP would go to pay that debt increase, or about 1.5% of global GDP. As we have discussed many times, debt is a limiting factor on future growth. Debt is future consumption brought forward. Repaying that debt requires either reduced future consumption or some kind of debt liquidation – those are the only choices.
Debt has additional consequences. I have highlighted research from my friends Lacy Hunt and Van Hoisington that correlates increased total debt with slower overall growth. The graph below from Hoisington Investment Management shows total debt as a percentage of GDP for the major developed countries.
Note that Japan, with by far the highest debt-to-GDP ratio, is growing slower than Europe, which is growing slower than the US. China’s debt is rapidly overtaking the US’s debt, and at its current growth rate it will soon overtake Europe’s. The grand Chinese debt experiment will eventually reveal the true linkage between the size of debt and growth.
A Citibank report shows that the OECD countries face $78 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. That is at least 50% more than their total GDP. Pension obligations are growing faster than GDP in most of those countries, if not all. Those are obligations on top of their total debt.
By the way, most of those pension obligations are theoretically funded from future returns, which are going to be sparse to nonexistent. That means obligations are compounding significantly faster than the ability to pay them. Without serious adjustments to either benefits or funding, there is literally no hope of catching up.
Thought exercise: In European countries where taxes are already more than 50% of GDP, where will they find an extra 5–10% to meet those future pension obligations? How long will younger generations tolerate carrying older generations when the government is taking two thirds of their paychecks? You can begin to see the scope of the problem.
Sometime this year, world public and private debt plus unfunded pensions will surpass $300 trillion – not counting the $100 trillion in US government unfunded liabilities. Oops.
These obligations simply cannot be paid. A time is coming when the market and voters will realize that these obligations cannot be met. Will voters decide to tax “the rich” more? Will they increase their VAT rates and further slow growth? Will they reduce benefits? No matter what they decide, hard choices will bring political turmoil, which will mean market turmoil.
History shows it is more than likely that the US will have a recession in the next few years, although one doesn’t appear to be on the near horizon. But when it does come, it will likely blow the US government deficit up to $2 trillion a year. Obama took eight years to run up a $10 trillion debt after the 2008 recession. It might take just five years after the next recession to run up the next $10 trillion. Here is a chart my staff created in late 2016 using Congressional Budget Office data, showing what will happen in the next recession if revenues drop by the same percentage as they did in the last recession (without even counting likely higher expenditures this time). And you can add the $1.3 trillion deficit in this chart to the more than $500 billion in off-budget debt, plus higher interest rate expense as interest rates rise.
Whether the catalyst is a European recession that spills over into the US, or one triggered by US monetary and fiscal mistakes, or a funding crisis in China, or an emerging-market meltdown, the next recession will be just as global as the last one. And there will be more build-up of debt and more political and economic chaos.
President Trump is a fairly controversial figure, but I think most of us can agree that Trump is going to make volatility great again. The Great Reset will bring an increase in volatility, and the correlation among asset classes will once again approach 1.0, as it did during 2008–2009.
If I’m right about the growing debt burden, the recovery from the next recession may be even slower than the last recovery has been – unless the recession is so deep that we have a complete reset of all asset valuations. I don’t believe politicians and central banks will allow that. They will print and try to hold on as long as possible, thwarting any normal recovery, until markets force their hands.
But then, I can think of at least three or four ways that politicians and central bankers could react during the Great Reset, and each will bring a different type of volatility and effects on valuations. Flexibility will be critical to successful investing in the future.
(Next week, in part two, we will deal with two other major problems in putting portfolios together, but today’s letter is long enough. I will wrap up with just a few comments and an offer.)
How Should We Then Invest?
So let’s sum up. In my opinion, the entire world is entering what I call the Great Reset, a period of enormous and unpredictable volatility in all asset classes. I believe that diversifying among asset classes will simply diversify your losses during the next global recession. And yet, active management seemingly has not been the answer. So what do we do?
I think the answer lies in diversifying among noncorrelated trading strategies that can invest in any asset class. For a reasonably sophisticated investment professional with sufficiently high assets, there are any number of ways to diversify trading strategies.
Up to this point, I’ve talked philosophy rather than action. Now I will tell you how I intend to diversify trading strategies and give you a link to the actual strategies and managers I will be using. Some will not agree with the philosophy outlined above, some will think they can do a better job themselves. However – putting on my entrepreneurial business hat – my hope is that some of you will join me.
Back in the day, I allocated money to asset managers who traded mutual funds and did so successfully. Unfortunately, the rules changed to make active trading of mutual funds difficult, which significantly reduced return streams. But the growth of money in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) changed things again. Globally, there is now about $4 trillion in ETFs. There are almost 2000 ETFs in the US alone, and according to ETFGI there are 4,874 ETFs globally, with assets skyrocketing from $807 billion in 2007 to $4 trillion today.
You know how somebody will talk about getting a time-consuming task done and then the next person says, “There’s an app for that”? No matter what asset you want, there’s now an ETF for that. I am constantly amazed how narrowly focused ETFs can be. There is now an ETF that focuses its investments just on companies in the ETF industry. It’s not all large-cap-index ETFs anymore. Some really small, niche-market ETFs have attracted significant capital.
Not surprisingly, a growing number of asset managers actively trade ETFs using their own proprietary systems. I began searching for the best of them some three years ago. I soon realized, for reasons I will explain in a white paper, that a combination of several managers is much better than just one. I have assembled a portfolio of four active ETF asset managers/traders with radically different styles. That approach theoretically gives me the potential for much less volatility than each manager’s system would face individually. The combination I’ve put together has been less volatile historically than the markets, over a full cycle.
Part of my edge is that I have been in the “manager of managers” business for more than 25 years, looking at hundreds of investment managers and strategies. That has actually been my day job when I’m not writing. So when a manager explains his system to me, I can “see” how it fits with those of other managers, understand whether it is truly different, and finally, determine whether it would add any benefit to my total mix. I’ve also learned that having more than the optimal number of managers doesn’t necessarily improve overall performance, but it does add complexity and increase trading costs.
Introducing Mauldin Solutions Smart Core
I believe passive investment strategies will come under severe pressure in the coming years. Many investors have their “core” portfolios in these passive strategies. If you are prepared to ride out another 2001–02 or 2008–09 and then go through what I think will be an even longer and weaker recovery (until the debt issue is resolved), then stick with your passive strategies. But if you’re looking for another option, let me offer you one.
My investment advisory firm is called Mauldin Solutions, LLC. I am calling the ETF trading strategy I have developed the Mauldin Solutions Smart Core. I don’t think of it as an alternative investment for a sliver of your total portfolio. Rather, I think it can become a significant part of your core portfolio.
Now, what the size of your core portfolio should be depends on many factors. That is something you should discuss with your investment advisor or counselors. (I think most investors should have an investment advisor and financial coach for tax strategies, retirement planning, estate planning, budgeting, and more. I’m not looking to become your financial advisor. I want to provide you and your advisor with an easily accessible strategy.)
For regulatory reasons, I can’t go into too much more detail in this letter. If you would like to know which managers I’ve chosen and what they do, go to www.mauldinsolutions.com and read a summary and then a more detailed white paper.
Mauldin Smart Core is now available on a growing number of platforms where we trade directly for larger investors and brokers and advisers. We also have a mutual fund that I will tell you about in the free white paper that is available now on most of the popular platforms.
I have assembled a professional team to help you get your questions answered. We are especially looking for investment advisors and brokers. While we are just in the US at this moment, we will soon be available in most parts of the world. I am amazed at how technology allows us to do that today.
For those of you in Europe, creating a UCITS around this product is fairly simple, and we intend to do that. If you are in a country other than the US, then come to the website, give us your name and email address. If you are an investment firm that would like to partner with us, make sure that you put that in the note, and somebody from my Mauldin Solutions team will get back to you. If you are an institution, pension fund, insurance company, bank or family office, you have your own special place to register on the website. With the team and partner companies I’ve assembled, I can structure almost anything you might want to satisfy your needs. The white papers will discuss fees and what you need to do to compare this strategy with those of other active managers. They will also show you how Mauldin Smart Core can fit into your own personal strategy.
When you go to the Mauldin Solutions website, the rules require me to gather your name and a little bit of information about you. If you would like, we can send you free regular updates from Mauldin Solutions so that you can follow our work as we continue to parse this remarkable economy. Mauldin Solutions will also issue regular portfolio strategy letters, along with the letters of my partners/strategists. And we can keep you updated on additional offerings and portfolio strategies that I think will enhance your portfolio opportunities if you sign up through the Mauldin Solutions website.
Click on this link to let me show you what Mauldin Solutions can do for you.
SBB here: Full disclosure – Our CMG Opportunistic All Asset Strategy is one of the four ETF strategies John selected for his Mauldin Solutions portfolio. We are thrilled to be working closely with John in his new endeavor. The Mauldin Solutions Smart Core combines four experienced ETF traders equal weighted into a single portfolio. It is designed to fit in as a core holding within a total investment portfolio. You’ll see more information via the link above. Please send me a note if you have any questions.
Trade Signals — Don’t Fight the Tape or the Fed
S&P 500 Index — 2,398 (5-24-2017)
Notable this week: This week, the Don’t Fight the Tape or the Fed signal moved to a +1 – a very bullish signal. Since 1980, the S&P 500 Index has gained 22.84% (annualized) when the reading was +1. Interestingly, +1 readings occurred just 24.14% of the time. As has been the case for some time, the equity market, as measured by the Ned Davis Research CMG U.S. Large Cap Long/Flat Index, remains bullish. The Zweig Bond Model remains in a buy signal. The short-term gold trend indicator is in a buy signal. Investor sentiment is Extremely Optimistic, which is S/T bearish for equities but, while it warrants caution, the other trend indicators keep me bullish. Inflationary pressures are neither high nor low. The overall weight of trend and breadth evidence supports a continuation of the cyclical equity bull market.
Click here for the charts and explanations.
Personal Note — Almost June
Mark Yusko summed it up best at the conclusion of the conference, saying “It is the single best investment conference I attend each year.” It most certainly didn’t disappoint. Over the next several weeks, I’ll be replaying the audio recordings, reviewing my notes and sharing them with you in a tight and concise way.
I hope to get permission to share several of the video presentations. There is a blog page that posted a number of quotes as the presenters presented. There is also a link to order a “virtual pass” that gets you replays of the audio along with the presentation decks. The offering is from Mauldin Economics. There is a cost. I receive no compensation.
Brianna is coming home tonight to plant herself in a quiet place to study. She’s knee-deep in preparing for next Saturday’s CFA exam. One last week and an all-out push to pass level one. To me, the biggest failure is not to try. It has consumed her life the last five months and I’m really proud of her. Can’t wait to see her.
The boys are going with friends to the beach and Susan’s soccer team, as well as her youngest son Kieran’s team, are in weekend tournaments. That’s going to be fun. It’s been a long and fun week. It is hard to believe it is almost June. Summertime! I see an ice cold IPA or a nice glass of red wine in the immediate future.
Wishing you a cold beer (or your favorite beverage), a wonderful holiday weekend and time spent with those you love the most.
All the best!
If you find the On My Radar weekly research letter helpful, please tell a friend … also note the social media links below. I often share articles and charts during the week via Twitter and LinkedIn that I feel may be worth your time. You can follow me on Twitter @SBlumenthalCMG and on LinkedIn.
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With kind regards,
Steve
Stephen B. Blumenthal
Executive Chairman & CIO
CMG Capital Management Group, Inc.
Stephen Blumenthal founded CMG Capital Management Group in 1992 and serves today as its Executive Chairman and CIO. Steve authors a free weekly e-letter entitled, “On My Radar.” Steve shares his views on macroeconomic research, valuations, portfolio construction, asset allocation and risk management.
The objective of the letter is to provide our investment advisors clients and professional investment managers with unique and relevant information that can be incorporated into their investment process to enhance performance and client communication.
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A Note on Investment Process:
From an investment management perspective, I’ve followed, managed and written about trend following and investor sentiment for many years. I find that reviewing various sentiment, trend and other historically valuable rules-based indicators each week helps me to stay balanced and disciplined in allocating to the various risk sets that are included within a broadly diversified total portfolio solution.
My objective is to position in line with the equity and fixed income market’s primary trends. I believe risk management is paramount in a long-term investment process. When to hedge, when to become more aggressive, etc.
IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE INFORMATION
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Certain portions of the content may contain a discussion of, and/or provide access to, opinions and/or recommendations of CMG (and those of other investment and non-investment professionals) as of a specific prior date. Due to various factors, including changing market conditions, such discussion may no longer be reflective of current recommendations or opinions. Derivatives and options strategies are not suitable for every investor, may involve a high degree of risk, and may be appropriate investments only for sophisticated investors who are capable of understanding and assuming the risks involved. Moreover, you should not assume that any discussion or information contained herein serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from CMG or the professional advisors of your choosing. To the extent that a reader has any questions regarding the applicability of any specific issue discussed above to his/her individual situation, he/she is encouraged to consult with the professional advisors of his/her choosing. CMG is neither a law firm nor a certified public accounting firm and no portion of the newsletter content should be construed as legal or accounting advice.
This presentation does not discuss, directly or indirectly, the amount of the profits or losses, realized or unrealized, by any CMG client from any specific funds or securities. Please note: In the event that CMG references performance results for an actual CMG portfolio, the results are reported net of advisory fees and inclusive of dividends. The performance referenced is that as determined and/or provided directly by the referenced funds and/or publishers, have not been independently verified, and do not reflect the performance of any specific CMG client. CMG clients may have experienced materially different performance based upon various factors during the corresponding time periods.
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Certain information contained herein has been obtained from third-party sources believed to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee its accuracy or completeness.
In the event that there has been a change in an individual’s investment objective or financial situation, he/she is encouraged to consult with his/her investment professional.
Written Disclosure Statement. CMG is an SEC-registered investment adviser located in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Stephen B. Blumenthal is CMG’s founder and CEO. Please note: The above views are those of CMG and its CEO, Stephen Blumenthal, and do not reflect those of any sub-advisor that CMG may engage to manage any CMG strategy. A copy of CMG’s current written disclosure statement discussing advisory services and fees is available upon request or via CMG’s internet web site at www.cmgwealth.com/disclosures.