Are lumber costs signaling hassle forward?
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Tiiimber? Michael Gayed, the person behind the risk-on, risk-off ATAC Rotation Fund
ATCIX,
+0.11%
and its whopping 50% return this 12 months, is sounding the alarm on lumber costs and what they might imply for the broader stock market. “Nearly every major correction, crash, and bear market has been preceded by weakness in lumber,” he advised MarketWatch on Thursday. “The collapse over the last few weeks is a warning sign that the storm may already be here.”
Lumber costs have, certainly, proven indicators of weak spot these days after kicking off a rally again spring that in the end led to file highs amid optimism the U.S. economic system, battered by the coronavirus lockdown, would bounce again. Gayed, in his broadly adopted Lead-Lag Report, warned final Friday of an imminent decline and positioned his fund accordingly. The decision proved well timed contemplating the course of the foremost indexes earlier this week. So what’s an investor to do within the present local weather? Nothing too drastic, based on Gayed, however limiting publicity to riskier investments can be a prudent begin. “Not every storm guarantees an accident, which means it doesn’t make sense to make a bet shorting the market or going into cash,” Gayed defined. “Rather, it makes more sense to lower beta exposure by overweighting defensive areas, and tilting more towards traditional risk-off assets like Treasuries. Managing expectations is key here.” This isn’t the primary warning Gayed has issued in current months. After cashing in on the March backside by taking a risk-on strategy to his portfolio, he advised MarketWatch in August that the stock market has but to totally react to the disaster dealing with the nation. “It is a wild time in the markets,” he stated. “Despite a crippling global pandemic, where the U.S. is failing miserably at a response with daily record after daily record cases being broken, and a U.S. economy that seems to be teetering on the edge of yet another Fed Monetary Policy response, stock markets have not seemed to blink when recovering.” There wasn’t a lot blinking in Thursday’s session, with the Dow Jones Industrial Common
DJIA,
-0.07%
rebounding from this week’s declines with a triple-digit. The S&P 500
SPX,
-0.04%
and Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
-0.06%
had been additionally greater.
