403(b) Plan

The largest account that I manage is my wife’s 403(b) account. This account is long-only with a limited selection of choices (pretty much I can choose large cap, mid cap, or small cap, and value or growth, with a Europe fund and an Asia fund thrown in), and a requirement that any fund purchase be held for at least 1 month. All trades are made at the close of trading on a given day. My method for this account is to think in terms of 25% increments, with 4 “blocks” of money that can be either out or long. I sold my last long block a couple weeks ago at S&P 1570, in anticipation of a correction (I missed that last thrust higher, but it happens). Now that we appear to be having said correction, I will look to scale in long again as we pull back. My plan for re-entries is 25% each as close as possible to S&P 1540, 1500, and 1475, with adjustments depending on news and how the market is trading. As I’ve said before, my expectation is that we will now correct the move from S&P 1343 to 1597, so it should be larger than the other pullbacks we’ve seen recently. The economy is sluggish, growth is missing, but valuations are OK and there are no other attractive places to put money, so I still view this as a dip to buy.

I will buy my other 1/3rd AAPL position on a flush under 400. I’m not planning to have a stop in place, so I’m not sizing the position too large.