Rainer's Investment Insights

"The end is nigh for stocks to rally", or is it?  In the last paragraph of my  post from February 12th , I outlined a four-week window for a last ditch effort by the equity bulls, - very much against the noise and chatter in the media, who preferred to stir up fear that we see a disastrous extension of January's bloody correction in equities and commodities.  Needless to say that my proposed strategy returned a handsome profit, even with as basic an investment tool as mutual funds.Importantly, the choice of funds,  and the tactical adjustments in between,  made all the difference.  Re-Introducing A Model Portfolio Due to change of software and provider, I am restarting the model as of January 1st, 2016. This portfolio is in line with a high risk profile, which means we limit the equity exposure to a maximum quotient of 90%, with the remaining 10% invested in bonds and cash. At no point during this period did we expose the portfolio to more ris...

This morning was the big - highly anticipated - moment for Mr. Draghi's interest rate reduction. And yes, it was reduced to ZERO. But he also announced several more measures in an effort to keep the liquidity healthy and financial markets stable. By right, that should have resulted in European shares rallying, and the EUR weakening against world currencies. But that is NOT what happened! DISASTER STRIKES COMPARING EUR & DAX on 10-3-2016 SOURCE: Yahoo.Finance The EUR rallied by nearly 2% against the SGD (19:00h, German time) The DAX first rallied 2.5% but closed the day down 2.3%. Somehow, I don't believe that this was the desired outcome! Who is fooling who? DAX_EUR Inverse relationship in February and March, SOURCE: Yahoo.Finance. Indeed, against the SGD, the Euro has been falling since February 10, 2016, from a high of 1.578 SGD. At the lowest point on March 7, it bought 1.51 SGD. Did this 5% swing in the currency pair occur in anticipation of Mr Dr...