What’s a safe withdrawal rate?

I was recently asked my opinion on what a safe withdrawal rate for a deferred-tax pension plan managed with the Trend Asset Allocation Model.  As a reminder, the Trend Model has shown equity-like returns with balanced fund-like risk. The latest update of the model shows another strong month, with a one-month return of 2.5% compared...

The Zweig Breadth Thrust watch

Preface: Explaining our market timing models  We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade.   The Trend...

A rate hike roadmap

Now that a QE taper announcement is more or less baked-in for this year, the next question is when the Fed will raise rates. The July FOMC minutes highlighted the point that the criteria for a taper decision is entirely different from that for a rate hike.   Several participants emphasized that an announcement of...

The market endures a summer squall

Preface: Explaining our market timing models  We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade.   The Trend...

The market risk hiding in plain sight

As the infrastructure and budget bills make their way through Congress, I was surprised to see that the latest BoA Global Fund Manager Survey did not mention a corporate tax increase as a key risk to the S&P 500.      The Biden tax proposals have been well telegraphed and most of the details have...