By seadmin
I woke up this morning in one of my favorite cities to revel in: the one and only Las Vegas, Nevada. I’m here this week for the annual Las Vegas MoneyShow, a meeting of the minds between individual investors and advisors and newsletter writers like me.
This year I was struck by two significant things. The first is the sophistication of the questions I received from attendees at my
Successful Investing advisory service subscriber-only event.
I have one of the smartest subscriber bases around, and this year I am happy to report that based on their very positive feedback and the intelligence of their questions, we are definitely on the right track with our current portfolio and with our approach to the market. I am always glad to see so many of you in person at once, and I want to thank you for taking the time to come see me and lend me your support.
The other thing that struck me so far was the incredible number of people and the bustling activity I saw last night at the casinos, bars and restaurants, and on the Las Vegas strip. I’ve been coming to this city every year around this time for many years, and this was by far the busiest I’ve seen things in quite some time. The economy may not yet be fully recovered, as the employment and housing numbers continue to tell us. But at least anecdotally, my “Vegas indicator” is better than it’s been since well before the Great Recession.
Now, I realize my Vegas indicator isn’t scientific, but watching so many people spending money and frolicking about town on a Tuesday night in May does give one cause to think that at least in this corner of the world, consumer spending is rebounding in a big way.
As for the markets, well, the bull also continues to frolic. In the above chart of the S&P 500 Index, we see that after a brief sell off in the first week of May, stocks have come roaring back, and they’ve nearly come back to the 52-week high they reached in late April.
The bullish movement in stocks so far in 2011 confirms our call at the beginning of the year that both the markets and the economy are on the mend, having to overcome some very strong headwinds. I expect this trend to continue as we enter into what’s traditionally a slow season for the markets, and that would make 2011 much different than the slowdown we saw last year between May and September.
I think this year is one that you’ll definitely not want to “sell in May and go away.” Rather, I think the applicable adage this year would be something like, “buy in May and collect your pay."
