If you visited the Yahoo Finance web page on Wednesday, you may have seen this headline: "Dow 6,000: Wild prediction or worthwhile caution?" The article behind the headline is about a guy named Harry Dent. Dent has made a number of market predictions over the past few decades--his...

Reality is setting in once again for investors that the Federal Reserve can't keep funding the so-called recovery forever. Stocks sank yesterday due to stronger-than-expected domestic growth and the likelihood that European growth will soon improve spurred by a rate cut in that region yesterday.

    A headline which appeared on Bloomberg’s website yesterday “Stock Volatility to Leave Lasting Scars on Investors’ Psyche” highlights a concern that a growing number of investors are leaving stocks for good. Last week the S&P experienced an unprecedented four-day span of volatility in which the large-cap index fell and rose by at least 4% each day. In a panic, investors pulled $23.5 billion from US equity funds, the most since the financial crisis began in October 2008, according to the Investment Company Institute. 

Before getting involved with the numbers, the whys, and the wherefores of the latest global market volatility, let me reassure you, our clients, that your portfolios are conservatively allocated and diversified with higher than usual levels of cash. We do not try to time the markets, but during times of high volatility and uncertainty we err of the side of caution, particularly in the more risk-averse models. This global sell-off is all about the question of whether the growth outside of the US sustains itself in the face of a US slowdown or recession. Because it is unprecedented, investors are re-assessing their earlier rosy assumptions.