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The free lunch as the saying goes refers to the 19th-century practice in American bars of offering a "free lunch" to entice drinking customers. Obviously, bars weren’t in the business of giving away their food and drink. It simply occurred to them that giving away overly salted food was good for their business! 

One of the “deadliest” sayings in investing is “This time it’s different”. Many investors and pundits, when faced with data contrary to their current views will rationalize a position by saying those infamous words. As they say as well, “history may not repeat, but it does rhyme.” While the big picture may not repeat, policy decisions and market reactions do. Whether interest rates are changing due to inflation fears, a slowing or accelerating economy, macro dollar policy…the results are the same. Fed tightening (rising interest rates) are never good for the market or the economy.

Many people who don’t write themselves, think that writing a few paragraphs on a topic, posting it, and calling it a blog, is a pretty easy process. But as I’ve been a writer for years from everything from a book and to professional publications to many, many blog posts, let me say, it isn’t that easy! Ideas may be many but formulating an idea into a cohesive article, doing research when necessary, and trying to stay timely in our rapid changing (financial) world can be a tough ask.

As we head into the final month of summer, we head into Wall Street’s traditional slow season. Statistically August and September are two of the worst months of the year as traders partake in their annual migration to the Hamptons.  Add in questions surrounding the strength of the economy and be prepared for the “Bears” to come out with their stock market crash predictions.

Introducing Fund Trader Pro, LLC (FTP) a new company with a new approach to managing 401k retirement accounts. FTP is a robo advisor with a personal, customer centric business model.

FTP’s approach utilizes a momentum based model co-authored by Bill DeShurko, one of FTP’s Managing Members. The research was awarded the prestigious Charles H Dow Award by the Market Technicians Association in 2008.

While we do agree that past performance is certainly not a guarantee of future results past performance does provide valuable information.

Russell style indexes exhibit significant momentum, particularly after medium term out- and under performance. The existence of this momentum produces a diversified, index-based low-cost means to exploit momentum by incorporating relative style index performance into tactical allocation strategies. Such style index momentum trading strategies have outperformed on both a raw and risk adjusted return basis, with the long minus short portfolio generating an average 9.25% annual return over the 34-year period analyzed.

Let me count the ways…What are they? Target Date or Retirement Date Funds (TDF) are used by 401(k) retirement accounts for participants that either didn’t know how, or didn’t want to bother with creating their own retirement portfolio. The concept is simple. Let an investment company, like Fidelity for example, create model investment portfolios for investors using their own mutual funds based on when the investor plans on retiring. So if you are 40 years old, plan to retire at 65 you would pick a 2035 Target or Retirement date fund.