I’ve been negligent with my portfolio rebalancing this year and have way too much cash in my accounts. Although I don’t think I can time the markets, I am loathe to buy equities after they have gone up a lot.
Today – I finally pulled the trigger on some ETFs for my couch potato portfolio. The markets have been in a slump lately and today was just a great time to do some buying.
I purchased:
- XIU (iShares Canadian large cap ETF) at $17.70
- VEA (Vanguard Europe & Asia equity index ETF) at $34.12
- VTI (Vanguard US equity index ETF) at $62.37
These ETFs are all lower than the beginning of the year and well off their recent highs.
I still have a lot more cash to get rid of, so I’m hoping the markets will fall even further.
On with the links
The Wealthy Canadian wrote about opening an RESP account for his little boy. He also said some nice words about my book. 🙂
In Japan, they have subway employees who’s job it is to push people into the trains. I had heard of this, but I just couldn’t believe this YouTube video – they really know how to jam people into subway cars in Japan.
The Oblivious Investor had some very good advice in asset allocation – set to your maximum loss.
The Steadyhand blog is doing a financial profile on a guy named Bruce. I love financial profiles and the fact that this Bruce fellow sounds a lot like me, makes this one all the more interesting.
Michael James thinks that most active stock pickers are working for a negative wage.
Michael’s post reminded me of a post I did called Do you really “earn” your investment income. It’s easy to think you are making money in an up market, but you have to compare your performance to that of a passive strategy. Even if you can beat the market, is it worthwhile to do so unless you have a large portfolio?
Boomer & Echo has some interesting stories about dealing with elderly parents.
Canadian Capitalist doesn’t mind if you mash couch potatoes. But he demands a reasonable alternative.
Today’s Economy blog has some followup discussion on the great debt ceiling debate.
Million Dollar Journey talks about little known Canadian benefit programs.
12 replies on “LinkStuff – A Great Day In The Markets Edition”
You have cash to get rid of. You can send it to me. Problem solved!
My portfolio is reasonably in balance and the markets are still far from triggering a rebalance. Thanks for the mention.
@CC – Perhaps “cash to get rid of” wasn’t the best choice of words. 🙂
Yes, in the grand scheme of things – today was no big deal.
Thanks for mentioning Boomer’s post, Mike!
I don’t get too worked up over a one or two day dip, but I don’t have any cash to deploy either 😉
Mike,
Just curious, but what % do you tend to hold in cash? And how do you treat it in your portfolio, as a seperate asset class?
Thanks,
Balk
Mike, I know exactly how you feel. I’d been waiting for a day like yesterday to deploy some of the cash in our account(s). I got some shares of XIU as well. But who knows, it might very well go down another $0.50 by the end of today.
Would you consider buying more if it does? Just curious.
@Bob – Absolutely. I have a certain amount of cash I want to deploy. I only used up about 1/3 yesterday.
Thanks for the link Mike. Very relieved to see the U.S. jobs report this morning.
Thanks for the mention. I wish I have more cash to buy in right now, but I only have a modest amount.
Oops. “I wish I had” not “I wish I have”
@Balk – My plan is have 25% fixed income in my portfolio. None of that should be straight cash.
In reality, my portfolio is about 40% fixed income, with the extra 15% being cash.
So I consider cash as being part of the fixed income allocation.
Wow, great day to be getting some money into the markets (depending when I guess), but this volatility is a great buying opportunity for disciplined investors. I just wish I had more capital to throw at index funds right now as all the talking heads scream, “The sky is falling, ITS DIFFERENT THIS TIME!”
Thanks for the mention Mike. Hope there’s not too many similarities between you and Bruce 🙂 … do you have a hate on for Sammy Hagar too?