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Monarch Report 10/15/2012

Consumer sentiment hit a five-year high in the preliminary October reading, according to the University of Michigan-Thomson Reuters sentiment gauge. Housing foreclosure filings hit a low in September, according to RealtyTrac. Analysts are now forecasting a 0. Percent decline in corporate earnings for the just completed third quarter, according to Bloomberg.

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53 views4 pages

Monarch Report 10/15/2012

Consumer sentiment hit a five-year high in the preliminary October reading, according to the University of Michigan-Thomson Reuters sentiment gauge. Housing foreclosure filings hit a low in September, according to RealtyTrac. Analysts are now forecasting a 0. Percent decline in corporate earnings for the just completed third quarter, according to Bloomberg.

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Elizabeth Wilson, MS, CFP, CMFC

The Monarch Report October 15, 2012


The Markets
Two widely watched indicators just hit five-year extreme levels and thats a positive for the economy. Consumer sentiment hit a five-year high in the preliminary October reading, as measured by the University of Michigan-Thomson Reuters sentiment gauge. This gauge covers how consumers view their personal finances as well as business and buying conditions, according to MarketWatch. Higher levels of sentiment could translate into higher consumer spending and help propel the economy. And, the second indicator, housing foreclosure filings, hit a five-year low in September, according to RealtyTrac. Foreclosure filings include default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions. In September, there were 180,427 foreclosure filings. By contrast, that number was above 350,000 in mid-2009, so, yes, foreclosure filings have improved significantly over the past few years. And, for good measure, lets throw in a third indicator weekly jobless claims which fell to their lowest level in more than four years for the week ending October 6, according to Bloomberg. Lower claims may mean employers are seeing enough demand to maintain current staff, a necessary first step to bigger gains in hiring, according to Bloomberg. While these three indicators look good, Earnings pessimism among U.S. chief executive officers is climbing to levels last seen when the Standard & Poors 500 Index was mired in bear markets, according to Bloomberg. In fact, analysts are now forecasting a 0.9 percent decline in corporate earnings for the just completed third quarter, according to Bloomberg. Good news, bad news, whats an investor supposed to take from this? Well, like the movie by the same title, its complicated. The economy continues to recover and rebalance from the Great Recession and this leads to some indicators looking good, others looking bad, and some looking just plain normal.

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Data as of 10/12/12 Standard & Poor's 500 (Domestic Stocks) DJ Global ex US (Foreign Stocks) 10-year Treasury Note (Yield Only) Gold (per ounce) DJ-UBS Commodity Index DJ Equity All REIT TR Index

1-Week -2.2% -1.8 1.7 -1.0 -0.6 -0.7

Y-T-D 13.6% 7.8 N/A 12.2 4.4 15.7

1-Year 18.3% 4.6 2.2 5.0 0.6 29.2

3-Year 9.9% 0.1 3.4 18.6 3.7 20.3

5-Year -1.8% -7.0 4.7 18.7 -3.7 1.4

10-Year 5.4% 7.8 3.8 18.7 3.3 12.3

Notes: S&P 500, DJ Global ex US, Gold, DJ-UBS Commodity Index returns exclude reinvested dividends (gold does not pay a dividend) and the three-, five-, and 10-year returns are annualized; the DJ Equity All REIT TR Index does include reinvested dividends and the three-, five-, and 10-year returns are annualized; and the 10-year Treasury Note is simply the yield at the close of the day on each of the historical time periods. Sources: Yahoo! Finance, Barrons, djindexes.com, London Bullion Market Association. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. N/A means not applicable.

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW THE SECRET to Warren Buffetts remarkable investment success? First, some background. Buffett partially owns a company called Berkshire Hathaway and he uses this as his vehicle for making investments in other companies. So, when people say Buffett is a great investor, theyre looking at the performance of Berkshire Hathaway stock which, in turn, tends to reflect the performance of the companies Berkshire owns. Further, a recent academic paper by Andrea Frazzini, David Kabiller, and Lasse H. Pedersen, titled Buffetts Alpha, said, Buffetts performance is outstanding as the best among all stocks and mutual funds that have existed for at least 30 years. Now, heres the secret to Buffetts spectacular returns according to the papers authors: We find that the secret to Buffetts success is his preference for cheap, safe, high-quality stocks combined with his consistent use of leverage to magnify returns while surviving the inevitable large absolute and relative drawdowns this entails. Lets look at each of those components: 1) Cheap: defined as value stocks with low price-to-book ratios 2) Safe: defined as stocks with low beta and low volatility 3) High-quality: defined as stocks of companies that are profitable, stable, growing, and have high dividend payout ratios 4) Leverage: perhaps shockingly, the authors discovered that Berkshire magnified its returns by leveraging its capital by 60 percent financed partly using insurance float with a low financing rate
Source: Buffetts Alpha paper

This is not a buy or sell recommendation on Berkshire Hathaway stock, rather, it shows Buffett latched on to a good strategy early in his career, used leverage to magnify his returns, and stuck to the strategy even when it suffered large declines. Now that we know how Buffett achieved his outstanding return (including the surprising leverage), does this in any way diminish his results? No. In fact, its probably just the opposite.
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Buffett figured this strategy out more than 30 years ago and researchers are just now catching up with him!

Weekly Focus Think About It


Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought. --Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Hungarian biochemist Best regards, Your Monarch Team P.S. Please feel free to forward this commentary to family, friends, or colleagues. If you would like us to add them to the list, please reply to this e-mail with their e-mail address and we will ask for their permission to be added. Securities offered through LPL Financial, Member FINRA/SIPC.
* This newsletter was prepared by Peak Advisor Alliance. Peak Advisor Alliance is not affiliated with the named broker/dealer. * The Standard & Poor's 500 (S&P 500) is an unmanaged group of securities considered to be representative of the stock market in general. * The DJ Global ex US is an unmanaged group of non-U.S. securities designed to reflect the performance of the global equity securities that have readily available prices. * The 10-year Treasury Note represents debt owed by the United States Treasury to the public. Since the U.S. Government is seen as a risk-free borrower, investors use the 10-year Treasury Note as a benchmark for the long-term bond market. * Gold represents the London afternoon gold price fix as reported by the London Bullion Market Association. * The DJ Commodity Index is designed to be a highly liquid and diversified benchmark for the commodity futures market. The Index is composed of futures contracts on 19 physical commodities and was launched on July 14, 1998. * The DJ Equity All REIT TR Index measures the total return performance of the equity subcategory of the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) industry as calculated by Dow Jones. * Yahoo! Finance is the source for any reference to the performance of an index between two specific periods. * Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice and are not intended as investment advice or to predict future performance. * Past performance does not guarantee future results. * You cannot invest directly in an index. * Consult your financial professional before making any investment decision.

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* To unsubscribe from The Monarch Report please reply to this e-mail with Unsubscribe in the subject line, or write us at [email protected]. Sources: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/consumer-sentiment-jumps-to-five-year-high-2012-10-12 http://www.realtytrac.com/content/foreclosure-market-report/september-and-q3-2012-us-foreclosuremarket-report-7424 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-11/jobless-claims-in-u-s-fall-to-four-year-low-as-quarterstarts.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-11/profit-pessimism-highest-since-09-as-intel-fedex-cutforecasts.html http://www.econ.yale.edu/~af227/pdf/Buffett%27s%20Alpha%20-%20Frazzini,%20Kabiller%20and %20Pedersen.pdf http://thinkexist.com/quotation/research_is_to_see_what_everybody_else_has_seen/193718.html

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