Hi all,

A few days away from the market and...nothing is resolved.  That is par for the course as there are always open questions.  For myself, I started bailing on some of my speculative names AVP, TEF, AMZN only one of which (AMZN) did well.  I am not certain that the speculative names will lead us out of the morass.

I will look to buy the safer dividend names GE, CL, LO, KO, JNJ as well as the telecom sector VZ or T, 2 stocks which have done particularly well in this environment.  I have been struck recently with how much wireless we will be consuming in the future and these two players have the existing infrastructure to provide it.  Other will challenge, but they are there and are paying nice dividends to boot.

The banks are still iffy and I would keep any positions in the speculative bucket and keep it small.  I imagine that JPM Chase is/will be a good buy as they have been hammered by the risk management fracas.

On the bond side, my TIPS sale is now looking ok, but in my view there is significant more downside in bonds so I am holding off on any re-buying.  If the 30 year TIP gets back to the 1% level, I may have a look there. (currently around 0.5).

Also, MHN, one of my favorites, is a ETF that holds mostly New York muni's.  Watch the premium on this one as it is now around +4%.  This is historically high for this stock and we could see some pullback.  If I were inclined to trade it more, I would sell a piece and look to rebuy when the premium is at 0% or lower.

Finally, as I look over my portfolio I can break it down into two segments - ETF's and stocks.  Dollar wise they are not too far from each other, but from a volatility and yield point of view they are worlds apart.  My ETF portfolio yields over 8% (pre tax) and does not move much wheras my stocks have about a 2+% yield and have moved a lot with the overall market.  I do still believe stocks are cheap and I will be rewarded over time for holding them, but I do wonder if I should hold a bit less there and put more into my ETF portfolio which is mostly bond like but with juiced yields.  The components of the ETF side are HYG,JNK,PFF,MHN,VVR,BKLN.