Time for Active Management
Whether they're aware of it, the majority of stock investors today are enrolled in a "buy and hold" approach — what we call passive investing. And, notwithstanding extreme valuations and growing signs of instability, passive has become the default strategy for the majority of investors.
More troubling is that this "buy it and forget it" approach to investing your retirement savings is enouraged by Congress, financial academics, and, of course, by the Wall Street giants and their advisers.
Buying and holding has become hard-wired into the system. After all, it's worked for over forty years . . .
Keeping an Eye on the BigTen
The mechanical implementation of passive strategies creates poorly understood feedback loops that are today significantly distorting the valuations of the Big Ten - the ten largest mega-cap companies that domnate the financial markets.
The growing disconnect between price and value for these issues is becoming a threat to the viability of the financial system. Your portfolio needs to monitor and manage this threat . . .
The KP Trend Model identifies the current trend regime of US equities markets.
Effective December 26, 2025, the Model shifted back to a Yellow status, having previously re-visited Green for just 24 trading days before the Christmas holiday.
The Yellow condition has characterized the US market environment for 34% of all trading days over the past quarter century.
During those intervals, it has generated a positive annualized return of +10.2%, but with considerably more annual volatility (21%) than the Green condition . . .
Identifying Market Trends
The performance of a portfolio of equities is dominated by market trends, not by selections of individual invest-ments.
Identifying these trends is quite challenging, as we would expect. Yet this effort could be critical to your financial survival.
Even a partially successful effort to manage the threat of the next "black swan" can significantly reduce your portfolio volatility and draw-down risk . . .
