Excitement Yesterday and Interest Rates Drift Lower
By: Tim McPartland,
Yesterday was a good day for both stocks and bonds as the silly folks on Wall Street decided that maybe the FOMC statement would contain the words ‘considerable time’ after all–so for no real reason ‘let’s party’.
We seldom argue with a rally of any sort that helps us–why turn down a ‘gift’–so we happily take the gains. On the other hand it is likely that if they take the words out of the statement the negative reaction will be just a bit worse than it would have been before the rally.
We will sit and wait, but in the meantime we are comtemplating selling today both Vanguard Natural Resources and Compressco Partners–both MLP’s. Compressco was not meant to be a long term hold–but was a ‘flip’ from when they sold a secondary in July and we have a nice gain. Vanguard is one of the few energy related issues we have and we are not comfortable with this issue for the next year–the pricing of oil and gas and the coming recessions in Asia and Europe do not bode well for share prices. Additionally this puts a little cash in the pockets for any set backs that come in income issues.