I don't buy into the chicken little thing......I also do not manage my cash as such, rather it is a product of my buying or selling and new cash flowing into my account each month......If I find it difficult finding good stocks to buy or I dump a loser, then my cash balance increases. When asset values are low, then I am backing up the truck to load up and cash goes to near zero.
Currently I am at 11% cash.....so that tells me asset prices are high and am finding it difficult deploying all the cash.
Just one other observation......With the economy strong and earnings are expected to grow this quarter somewhere around 15-18%....I would willing to take a guess that these recent down days has some of the institutional investors and/or hedge funds selling off a bit and setting some cash aside to buy into those companies that produce the best quality earnings this month and on the flipside they are will probably dump companies they still hold that turn in poor earnings reports.
I was at about 50% cash, but bought small amounts of Amzn and V. Also added to Amd below 26 and to Oxy, near the low, at 79.65.
I think that there is some into year end asset reallocation selling going on, which is intensifying the sell-off. Of course, there is a list of worries the analysts are talking about, which is not really different from the past few days. I do not trust analysts. Lol.
I have doubled my duration from .13 years to .19 years and the cumulative yield from 1.5 to 2.55.
I don't see any value in 10 year AA at anything under 6%
Over 4% I would consider dipping into AA 2 year
A small amount of BDC's might be a good way to play "borrowing long at low rates and lending short at higher rates"
Presentations from
Apollo - increased amount of floating rate
Prospect Capital - core capital = graph on how borrowing and lending comes due in time
Also, I can take the opportunity of rising rates to add attractive dividend stocks
I have to monitor this matrix
Stocks UP Yields UP
Stocks Down Yields UP - Today based on 10 year
Stocks UP Yields Down
Stocks Down Yields Down
Hard to answer. But I would say I am about 25% cash compared to the amount allotted for single equities.
Am selling off pieces of my worst fund to add to my best (that hasn't reached it's limit). Same day transactions.
I try to keep some cash on hand to sell puts on a day like today, maybe 5-10%. I actually started last Friday, but the more it goes down the more puts I sell.
In this era of rapid, all-sector contagion, I did not like all the "risk pile-on" as mid-September rolled around. I figured out what equity and bond funds, and speculative securities would produce our investment part of the monthly nut. I then sold off everything else - some 40% of the portfolio. While the cash is currently earning Fidelity's paltry money market fund rate, the former underlying securities have declined and I'm expecting further risk-off, selloffs. Time will tell if I have blown it by selling too early, but I sleep at night and hope to buy a larger amount of dividends as panic pushes things lower and at least some of our President's actions have negative, unintended consequences.
Sky over Wall Street is starting to fall. I was about 30% cash, but started buying more balanced funds today.
The sky fell a bit but we might wait a few days to get Chicken Little out of the coop. No surprise to me. This could not go on forever. The Fed 9 year policy of keeping cash worth spit had to change. As an old guy, knew many folks burned in 08/09 who swore they would never get back in the market. By 11/12 after receiving many monthly statements with a $1.12 interest credit for $200k of idle money, they got back in. Little choice really. Folks ran for the hills today not because they feared losing money, they just wanted to lock in 40% ytd on what was 60+ yesterday. If it keeps up, we may need to get Chicken Little out of the coop. Meantime, I went 100% cash end of July except for 6,000 shares of Duk I bot at 77.51 for the div. I will wade back in but probably not tomorrow. Think the bad news has only started.