Yay Me!

This is a bit scary of me to say, but the Buy List has been doing incredibly well lately. We’ve beaten the S&P 500 for 14 of the last 17 days. Now I promise not to get too cocky because I’m still trailing the market for the year. In fact, just mentioning this makes me think that I’ll jinx it.
Last week, I noted that the Buy List had its best day relative to the S&P 500 for the year. It was only the third time we’ve beaten the market by over 1% in a day. Well yesterday was the best day ever against the S&P 500. We were up 0.16% while the S&P 500 was down -1.00%.
I’m stunned that these days are coming so close together. I build the Buy List to roughly conform to the overall market, but just do a little bit better (hopefully). Our daily correlation usually runs about 85%. Since October 18, the S&P 500 has dropped -6.55% while we’ve dropped just -1.54%. For the year, we still trail the S&P 500, 1.47% to 0.20%. But we’ve closed the gap enormously.
The big story yesterday was the fall in energy and materials stocks. That’s the major missing piece on the Buy List, so whenever those sectors trail, we tend to lead the market. Yesterday was a strange day because the dollar has its best day in over a year. Also, the Dow fell below 13,000 but its fall, in percentage terms, was half of the S&P 500. Outside of a few stocks, the market had a blah day.
Two small things to pass on. SEI Investments (SEIC) made news when it said it would provide financial guarantees for some of its money market funds. Also, Sysco (SYY) said it will raise its quarterly dividend by 15.8% to 22 cents a share.

Posted by on November 13th, 2007 at 12:09 pm


The information in this blog post represents my own opinions and does not contain a recommendation for any particular security or investment. I or my affiliates may hold positions or other interests in securities mentioned in the Blog, please see my Disclaimer page for my full disclaimer.