bulltraderpt wrote:One wonders when this bull market will genuinely either (a) pull back, or (b) crash.
Some commentators think it has 18 months plus left, others are not so sure. One things for sure, when I see people talking about wanting to buy crypto or start to trade shares (as I saw recently), I start to think we are nearing some kind of inflection point. As to when, perhaps we'll need a proper macro change or black swan to turn tail, but as to when, personally, I've no idea. Cheers.
Tough one eh, still 'climbing the wall of fear', that is the way up? Very hard to judge whether we're seeing 'irrational exuberance' yet, or how we might recognise it when we do. I still don't see anything like the climate we witnessed right before the .com crash, which IME was akin to a kind of mass euphoria. Then again we had the Russia-crisis and Emerging-market crises between 1995-98 and they seemed to arrive more like black-swans IME out of the blue.
So while I remain bullish for now, and I'm still well long, having got to where I want to be in lifetime-terms, I am starting to take some precautions.
- Unwinding remaining margin via trimming positions, very nearly there now.
- I am rebalancing my portfolio to spread risk more evenly over a wider number of holdings.
- Buying a few defensives vs the more risk-on attitude I've had.
- As part of the above points, trimming back on FTSE-250 holdings where the daily market volume is low relative to my overall position. I'd rather slowly trim in a measured way than suddenly be faced with no buy-side.
- I'd also consider how to partially and progressively move from 100% long/equity, to hedging out a portion into instrument/s that might act as a hedge if trouble arrives, but bonds seem expensive, gold pays no income in what ever form [IMU], and even if I sought to create a cash holding as a buffer to tide me over until things calmed down I'm unsure what I'd do with it that might be reasonably productive. There's even little point paying off my old mortgage as it dates from the early 00's and remains on one of the lowest BBR%+tracker rates that was available back then.