Business Cycle Investing

Last year my Pastor, good friend, and client Pastor James D Ritch mentioned in a Sunday Worship Sermon that he had a dream about his sermon being broadcast to the entire world. He said that in this dream his sermon was broadcast via satellite to the rest of the world. This is now possible by using the internet and a digital video camera. I recorded portions of 2 sermons and just finished putting them on the internet at the website youtube.com.

If you are not familiar with youtube.com just ask any teenager and you will get a quick education. Go to youtube.com and type in Pastor James Ritch in the Search box and then click on the Search button. Now anyone in the world can see his sermons. For those who know Pastor James D Ritch, help him reach his dream and let others know about these videos.

Every adult has a dream and typically to achieve it takes financial planning. It really does not matter if you own a business, work at a business, are in school, are retired, etc. you want to fulfill a dream. A role of a financial planner or investment advisor is to help define and execute a financial plan, including investment strategy, to achieve your dream.

A topic in the press is what is the best investment strategy for a long term investment? Some of the strategies being discussed are Buy and Hold, Active Stock Trading, Modern Portfolio Theory or Diversification, Value Investing, Growth Investing and Avoiding Stocks. If you look at for the last 80+ years none of these strategies gave the optimum performance.

The best strategy that I found involves matching investments to the economic business cycle or Business Cycle Investing. I have yet to see this style of investing published. As an economy goes through the 4 phases of a business cycle: growth, top, decline, and bottom the economic growth rate and interest rate change in a predictable manner. Since we are at a bottom in the economic business cycle, now is a good time to avoid long term bonds and buy stocks. In fact the last 6 weeks have been fun for an investor who owns stocks.