Tuesday 13 December 2011

Best to hold back: argument is finely balanced

Silver bounce?
Yesterday was a day of selling. I started off by selling my FTSE shorts when the market looked too strong for my liking. Turned out to be a mistake because the market fell sharply as the day went on and Wall Street opened weakly. At least I had all those US shorts. The end of the day, however, suggested that there there are still lots of bulls out there. They pulled the market back up from a new local low. Caution is crucial. When the argument between bulls and bears is so finely balanced there is not much opportunity to make money. Best to hold back.

Similar situation in gold and silver. With the benefit of my new appreciation of the current relationship between stock markets and those precious metals (see last two posts) reducing my holdings further seemed to be the right thing to do, so I did it. This morning I repurchased the silver that I sold yesterday. The price seemed to bounce off support. I judged that my silver holding was too small.

So here is my latest portfolio structure is: gold and silver 6% commodity 5% equity 2% shorts 13% cash 75%

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