Time Frame Strategies  

PORTFOLIO STRATEGY:  Monday, March10th, 2008

One Schwartz Rule that I’ve developed from my INVALUABLE day-trading experience of a couple years back is to SELL EARLY!, which led to the corollary rule to BUY EARLY! which has now morphed into the all purpose Schwartz Rule:  MOVE EARLY!  Following this rule I didn’t wait until last Friday to lighten up further; I took the break by the Nasdaq and Utilities two Fridays back and sold more last Wednesday and Thursday and it paid off.  So put that rule in your bag of tricks and pull it out when you get a sniff of any future upcoming top or bottom.  Don’t be afraid to trade along with hedge funds and other pros who also move on the first day in a new direction if other of your indicators in order.  Now if you’re currently happy with your market timing, just continue doing what you’re already doing;  you’ve obviously developed some sound strategies which I sure don’t want to change.  Anyway, I used my strategy to dump my oil services position last week and thus bypassed a big move down last Friday.  Finally, as I wrote Friday I trade/invest all time frames, so let me break down today’s ideas that way:

·         Advice for Long Term Investors:  I’d say be only about 50% invested now.  Besides holding some balanced, safety first, dividend paying or value mutual funds, I’d suggest holding a bit of your favorite industry sectors going forward.  Regular readers know my favorites for the long run are alternative energy, green funds, commodity and high tech.

·         Advice for Intermediate Term Speculators:  My recommendation here is to follow pretty closely the  recommendations listed below.  Choose a couple ideas from my Hedge Your Bets, one or both from Soft Agriculturals, say RJA, and one or both from Foreign Currencies.  You can see all three themes are doing well even though we’re in a bear market.