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A PUBLICATION OF FUND FAMILY SHAREHOLDER ASSOCIATION • VOL. 25, NO. 3
Greece Is the Word
Jan:
You mean you’re dropping out?
Frenchy:
I don’t look at it as dropping out! I look at it as a very strategic career move.
—Grease (1978)
INVESTORS AROUND THE GLOBE
were seemingly on tenterhooks in late February,
waiting to see how the battle between the EU and its wayward member, Greece, would
pan out. In the end, Greece reached a deal to kick the can down the road, and markets
roared ahead.
Any way you slice it, Greece’s newly elected government danced and danced and
made it look like dropping out of the EU was going to be a “strategic career move,” but
they’ve basically got nothing more than they started with, no matter how they spin it.
Greece and the EU have only agreed to a four-month extension, so there will be more
scenes in this drama. As Scorpions member Leo put it in the movie
Grease
, “The rules
are…there ain’t no rules.”
Stocks ruled, though. The Dow, the S&P 500 and myriad other domestic equity
indexes all hit records in February. The NASDAQ Composite came close, but at 4963.53,
it’s still 1.7% below the all-time closing high of Mar. 10, 2000. Throw in a bit of infla-
tion, and the NASDAQ has a long way to go to recover all of its prior “value,” however
inflated and ephemeral it may have been.
For the month,
Total Stock Market
rose 5.8%, while
Total International Stock
The Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors
and FFSA are completely independent of The Vanguard Group, Inc.
FUNDS FOCUS
> MODEL PORTFOLIO FUNDS
Sitting My Way to Gains
“It was never my thinking that made the big money for me, it always was my sitting.”
FAMED TRADER JESSE LIVERMORE
is said to have based his success on holding rather
than trading, though you wouldn’t know that from Edwin Lefevre’s fictionalized biogra-
phy of Livermore,
Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
. The book, first published in 1923,
has inspired many traders over the decades. And yet, while it is the story of a trader, to
the surprise of many, it is chock full of quotes about patience, extending investment time-
frames and keeping turnover low.
That pretty much sums up my thinking when it comes to the
Model Portfolios
I’ve
built, managed and tracked in this newsletter over the past 24 years. The proof is in the
pudding: In the table on page 12, you can get a nice summary of the performance of the
Models
, and see last month’s issue for a more complete review of their performance
DOW JONES INDUSTRIALS
February Close:
18132.70
STANDARD & POOR’S 500
February Close:
2104.50
3900
4200
4500
4800
5100
F JD NOS AJ JMAM
NASDAQ COMPOSITE
February Close:
4963.53
0.00%
0.01%
0.02%
0.03%
0.04%
F JD NOS AJ JMAM
3-MO.TREASURY BILLYIELD
February Close:
0.01%
1.6%
2.0%
2.4%
2.8%
3.2%
F JD NOS AJ JMAM
10-YR.TREASURY NOTE YIELD
February Close:
2.00%
15600
16275
16950
17625
18300
F JD NOS AJ JMAM
1750
1850
1950
2050
2150
F JD NOS AJ JMAM
AVERAGEVANGUARD INVESTOR*
February:
3.4%
YTD:
2.6%
-3.0%
-2.0%
-1.0%
0.0%
1.0%
2.0%
3.0%
4.0%
F JDNOSAJ JMAM
*See the footnotes on page 2.
Model Portfolios................................................................ 2
Ultra-Short Is Live............................................................. 4
Interview: Charles Plowden.............................................. 4
Stick With the Basics........................................................ 5
When Vanguard Fudges on Performance.......................... 6
Performance Review.................................................... 8-11
Distributions to Come..................................................... 15
Dan’s Do-It-Now Action Recommendations.................... 16
MARCH 2015
SEE
GREECE
PAGE 3
>
S P E C I A L E X P A N D E D 1 6 - P A G E I S S U E
>
SEE
FOCUS
PAGE 12