Day 218: DOW 21,700?
Mother's Little Helper portfolio was DOWN today -$4,098.54 (-0.53%).
Overall GAIN YTD: +$190,623.80 (+32.65%).
According to CNN Money our benchmark index, the S&P 500 is up +10.66% Year To Date.
http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/sandp/
On January 6, 2017 I posted the article below where I laid out my thesis for the DOW reaching 21,700 by 2018. I was off, by 300 points and 5 months. Today the DOW closed above 22,000 for the first time. As a buy and hold practitioner I probably should have ignored this milestone, it's just another fence post along the road. In the years to come we'll look back on DOW 22,000 the same way my dad looked back on DOW 500.
How much longer will this bull market last, when is the next recession? From the data I'm finding, when oil prices go way up, interest rates are hiked too fast, the FED's balance sheet is unwound too fast and earnings from U.S. corporations miss their projections across most industries.
January 6, 2017
The DOW watchers are out in full force. DOW 20K hats and silly glasses abound like it's New Years Eve. I'm not one of those who say it's just a number because I think there is a strong psychological effect of reaching these round-number milestones. But like a sprinter let's don't look at DOW 20K like it's the finish line, let's look beyond to the expansion and growth that's possible in the near term.
I took an old stalwart approach to predicting DOW 21,700! What a weird number but it works. Start with the "Dogs of the DOW" theory. This approach to investing says buy the 10 highest dividend yielding stocks in the DOW in equal amounts at the beginning of the year and then re-balance next year. Over time the Dogs of the DOW approach has had an average return of 20.30%.
Next I'm assuming Apple will repatriate a bunch of cash to us in the US. No I don't think they are going to buy anything except their own stock. At the most I'm assuming apple brings home $150 billion. Assuming they bring home anything at all investors will bid up Apple stock to at least the high end of the analysts consensus estimates of $185/share. So what. Well if Apple trades at $185 that adds 450 points to the DOW! Add in the Dogs of the DOW and that's another 1,250 points and that's how the DOW gets to 21,700 by 2018. The market is an organic thing, it grows, it expands, it inhales and exhales but it always finds its way higher.
Stay Invested
Clay Baker
Disclosure: I am personally invested long in these stocks that appear in the MLH portfolio and may purchase or sell share withing the next 72 hours. I am also invested in other stocks that do not appear in the MLH portfolio: BA, BRK.B, CELG, CSCO, CTXS, CVX, DOW, DVAX, FB, IBM, NTES, NVDA, OMER, PFE, PG, RDHL, SCHW, THO, TWX, VEEV, VZ, XLNX, XOM
