Adjusting for risk

Article Excerpt

We downplay market-timing and stock-price predictions in our advice. Instead, we focus on investment quality. But we adjust our recommendations to reflect our view of current market risk. When risk seems high, we lean toward “hold” instead of “buy”, or “sell” instead of “hold”. In June 2006, we advised selling a dozen former buys. We weren’t trying to pinpoint a market top. We simply felt these stocks had an unattractive balance of risk to potential reward. This change in our advice helped our readers avoid some nasty downturns in the 2007-2009 slump. We feel much the same today. Once again, we’ve changed our advice to “sell” on 12 stocks we follow. Finding the same number of sells now as in 2006 is a coincidence, but the reason for the change in our advice is the same. We’ve also changed our views on some stocks from “buy” to “hold”. This doesn’t reflect a change in our views about the market outlook,…