Oljefondet

Vi vil bruke en del tid fremover på å diskutere oljefondet, og om deres strategi er en måte å kaste bort vår fellesformue, eller om det de driver med er verdiskapning.



En grei måte å starte denne debatten er å ta utgangspunt til "kjøp og hold", som igjen og igjen blir sett på som en sikker vinner i aksjemarkedet. Bare man er langsiktig nok så går det bra til sist sies det fra flere eksperthold. Javel, men et slikt utgangspunkt, og da et mandat som er "så og si uendelig" (som "eksperter" elsker å si) så er oljefondet i trygge hender.

Artikkelen under gjør sitt beste for å motbesvise dette, og argumentere at kjøp og hold er en DØD stategi:

5 money moves one quant trader is making now

Buy-and-hold is dead; cash is king, Ritholtz says

By Jonathan Burton, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — To a generation of investors raised to believe in the power of owning stocks for the long run, Barry Ritholtz has a chara

cteristically blunt message: Buy-and-hold investing is dead.

The classic investing strategy that worked wonderfully through the 1980s and 1990s has been losing potency over the past decade, Ritholtz points out, but old beliefs die hard. Yet die they must — if an investor hopes to weather the current stormy market climate and even take advantage of it.
Ritholtz, an investment manager, is chief executive of FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm, and also runs a popular blog about markets and investing called The Big Picture. The way he sees it, stock investors need to bury the past — and quickly.
“The time for buy and hold is during a secular bull market, like from 1982 to 2000,” Ritholtz said. “When you’re in a secular bear market, which we are in, I think of investors’ jobs as managing risk and preserving capital.”
Indeed, the stock market’s action so far in August is unlike anyone on Wall Street has ever seen. In the five trading days through Friday, U.S. stocks were more volatile than at any time since November 1929, according to Standard & Poor’s.
“This is what happens to an economy that’s been surviving on government stimulus,” Ritholtz said. “Take that away, and the economy slows.”
A slower-than-expected economy means lower-than-expected corporate earnings and, accordingly, a repricing of stock valuations.

“People are starting to recognize that you have to price in some of these lower earnings,” Ritholtz said. “There was the expectation that the Fed would come to the rescue. The Fed isn’t coming to the rescue and whatever we’re looking at going forward is not likely to be a robust economy.”
If Ritholtz is right and the market’s near-term direction is down, it will pay to sell into rallies until this correction has run its course.
“This appears to be the long-awaited recovery-rally correction,” Ritholtz said. “On average the median correction should be about 25%, but because we went so much higher [in the rally from March 2009 through April 2011], don’t be surprised if the correction is a little bigger — 30% is a perfectly viable correction off the highs.”
With that in mind, here’s how Ritholtz has been investing clients’ money:

1. Stay defensive with stock positions

The stock market’s signals aren’t just mixed, they’re scrambled — and Ritholtz isn’t waiting for a clearer picture to develop. He’s sold out of riskier emerging markets, technology and small-cap shares, leaving his model asset-allocation portfolio 50% in cash and bonds and 50% in stocks with defensive qualities.
Individual stock holdings were also jettisoned in favor of index-tracking exchange-traded funds such as SPDR S&P Dividend ETF (NAR:SDY) , giving the portfolios exposure to broad-market risk but not stock-specific risk, Ritholtz said.
“We kept our conservative equities — dividend index funds, gold funds, value funds,” Ritholtz said. “Those are things that, if the market drops 30%, drop appreciably less.”

2. Bonds are still attractive

Some of the stock-sale proceeds were pumped into exchange-traded bond funds, specifically issues focused on high-quality corporate debt and Treasurys, Ritholtz said. Junk bonds, with their default risk, weren’t an option, he added.

Click to Play

Ritholtz: Markets and politics don't mix

Big Picture blogger and strategist Barry Ritholtz says that investing and politics don't mix, and lawmakers have monetary policy exactly backward. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images.)

“This is a place to park money; it’s really more of a ‘let’s hide out here until the worst of this is over,’” he said.

3. Cash is king

In moving out of stocks, Ritholtz also dramatically hiked cash levels to about 25% of the portfolio.
The last time the money manager’s cash positions were so high was early in 2010, when stocks suffered a setback, and also prior to the 2008 meltdown, Ritholtz said.
“In a secular bear market you must be a little tactical,” he said, adding that he’s comfortable with the portfolio’s 50-50 split. “We weren’t looking for so much of a drop that all-cash made sense,” Ritholtz said. “We’re comfortable riding this down and deploying cash at more advantageous levels.”

4. Be cautious with gold

Ritholtz is keeping some exposure to gold in the portfolio, but he’s mindful of the metal’s stunning run.
“When you’re buying gold, the expectation is that someone is going to come along and pay more than you did, and at some point that becomes a challenge,” he said.
“Gold is trade — not a religion,” Ritholtz said. “Eventually, like every other cycle, gold will end with a parabolic blow-off.”

5. Don’t be afraid to trade

The Federal Reserve’s pledge to keep interest rates low for at least two years amounts to a “transfer of wealth from savers to traders,” Ritholtz said. Accordingly, the stock market will reward the quick and agile.
“In this environment everyone’s a trader,” he said. “Anything you have in your portfolio you have to be willing to cut loose when it starts misbehaving. I don’t understand how people can ride stuff down 30-, 40-, 50%. There’s no longer a buy-and-hold-forever company; those days are done.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Ritholtz added. “I have no clue where were going. Over the past few weeks the risk levels have increased. When we see risk levels going up, we get defensive. If you see a train coming down the track you don’t say I’m a buy-and-holder. You get off the tracks.”